In the U.S., trailblazing leaders have crossed barriers for Chicanx and Latinx communities, opening new doors for others to continue the work of equity and justice for all. However, Latinx people remain under-represented in nearly all aspects of government and politics

The implications of wealth, or net worth (what you own minus what you owe) by race and ownership of housing, and neighborhood income are apparent in the health inequality and lack of access to health care. You often see better health facilities and well-trained doctors, and fully staffed medical facilities in more affluent communities compared to poor ones.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 was a major shift for immigrant communities, as it offered amnesty to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants living in the U.S. It also promised more punitive policies and restrictions for immigration moving forward. Since then, policymakers have not made any structural changes to immigration policy that facilitate pathways to citizenship or offer amnesty to undocumented workers living in the United States. Instead, politicians have focused on encouraging immigration among educated and professional immigrants, also known as “brain drain,” while providing more punitive and militarized immigrant policies, like border patrol, deportation, immigrant detention, and family separation. Pervasive immigration and anti-immigrant policies at both state and federal levels perpetuate nativist discourses of “us” versus “them,” where Latina/o/x immigrants are overwhelmingly portrayed by the media as criminals, invaders, and terrorists. This leads to an illegalized identity that can have serious ramifications. In recent years, elected officials like ex-President Donald Trump have amplified these stereotypes, encouraging the formation of anti-immigrant groups and emboldening unregulated militias who treat the southern border of the United States like a war zone. Hegemonic institutions, like ICE, instill fear among migrants by threatening their livelihood and family life. Further, racial profiling in immigration enforcement extends this fear to Latinx communities and people of color.

In the United States, early immigration acts (e.g., the Immigration Act of 1875, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act enforced racial and ethnic (national) quotas on immigrants coming to the United States and, ironically, called for the removal of Native Americans. The use of quotas creates a baseline expectation that migration to the United States will be carefully limited and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship will be restricted. This process is rooted in white supremacist ideas and has historically targeted specific countries and regions in attempts to restrict legal migration for Black and Brown people from around the world

La Raza is a term used interchangeably with Mexicans, Hispanics, Hispanidad, Latinx, and Chicanx, and it can connote a broad community of Latinx peoples united in their experience of Spanish colonization and racial mixing. During the Chicano Movement the term was used widely to emphasize shared heritage.

Although Latinx and Latine have found a place in higher education and in the media, these terms have received backlash, especially online. On social media platforms, some claim that they will never adopt the term, that it is linguistic imperialism and that the term doesn't make any sense linguistically. Furthermore, some who oppose Latinx claim that “Latino” is not offensive to anyone and that it should not change because it is linguistically accurate.

Chicanismo is an ideology applied to what it means to identify as Chicana/o/x: Chicanismo involves a crucial distinction in political consciousness between a Mexican American and a Chicano mentality. The Mexican American is a person who lacks self respect for his cultural and ethnic heritage. Unsure of himself, he seeks assimilation as a way out of his "degraded" social status. Consequently, he remains politically ineffective, in contrast, Chicanismo reflects self-respect and pride in one’s ethnic and cultural background… The Chicano acts with confidence and with a range of alternatives in the political world (Muñoz, Jr., 2007, p. 97).

lso known as the East L.A. Walkouts are widely regarded as catapulting the Chicano Movement forward in the late '60s and through the '70s. The Blowouts were a series of walkouts carried out in 1968 by Mexican American students in protest against the educational inequality they faced in their schools and classrooms. Students were frequently being punished for speaking Spanish, including corporal punishment such as physical whacking with a paddle. Other issues that students faced at the time included but were not limited to not having enough teachers who shared a similar ethnic, racial, or socioeconomic background or came from the same neighborhoods as them, resulting in class content that did not reflect their communities. Among the many grievances by the students, bathrooms were often locked, and students were left to their own devices to find where to relieve themselves, which was dehumanizing and a major distraction from learning.

the term Chicanx is used to refer to all people who identify as Chicana, Chicano, or Chicanx. These terms refer to communities whose family and lineage are rooted in Mexico and that live in the United States.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was passed in 1990.

Land, water and mineral rights are often protected through treaties; but remember treaties, the supreme law of the land, can be broken and all of them have been, by the federal government. The only recourse tribes have is to take the federal government to court, through the federal justice system, up to the Supreme Court. It is a long, costly and arduous process and the Supreme Court has the ability to deny hearing a case.

In addition, individuals could not afford all the necessary resources like tools, animals, seeds and supplies necessary to begin, let alone maintain a farm. Tribes were left unpaid or underpaid for the land allotments which often were too small to farm.

Ethnic cleansing has been defined as the attempt to get rid of (through deportation, displacement or even mass killing) members of an ethnic group. Ethnic cleansing is also the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, often with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Removal policies were acts of ethnic cleansing, and meant to take land from Native American tribes and place it in the hands of white invaders.

Colonization is the process of using power and assuming control through war, force, genocide, slavery, and intimidation of someone else’s territory, resources, culture and identity; and forcing one’s own culture, systems of law, government, and religion upon the remaining Indigenous group survivors

Sovereignty is a political concept that refers to dominant power or supreme authority

In just 3 short paragraphs Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy describes what it is like to be a California Indian woman today. She bids us to think about land theft, loss and destruction. She makes us think about the significance of intergenerational trauma and how violence doesn’t just hurt the victim. Cutcha calls us to think about missing and murdered indigenous women and places that California Native people deem sacred. Her life is place based. She speaks and writes from an internal place that is spiritually, emotionally, and intrinsically connected to where her ancestors and she were raised, and where their creation happened. Colonization may have pushed many of us from our homelands, but we return. See more on Dr. Risling Baldy's work on the Hupa Coming-of-Age Dance as decolonizing praxis under Chapter 8, section 8.6: Transformational Liberation through Love.

Reasons why we plant, what we plant, how we plant and how we harvest sustainably is passed on through storytelling. Stories tell us about what to gather and hunt as well as when to do so.

Each nation has their own creation story telling of the way things came to be: plants, animals, water, rivers, lakes, rain, the earth, mountains, valleys, wind, fire, stars and people. Not only do these stories tell us about ourselves and our creation, but they reveal how everything is related, connected, and intertwined. Important information is passed down generation after generation in stories.

We have always been here. We learned to respect and appreciate the land, water, plants and animals as living beings, and know them as our equals, as family; because without them there is no us. We were created here, and we shall remain.

American Indian Studies (AIS) or Native American Studies (NAS) is an academic discipline that formally began in the late 1960’s when Native American student activists coordinated with Asian American, Chicana/o/x, Puerto Rican and Black students to demand change within higher education.

This has also led to the field becoming a target for politicization by outside commentators and stakeholders who consciously organize misinformation campaigns using the media and local activist networks

Police officers used militarized tactics on strikers, including directly assaulting students.

These norms enforced colonial gender binaries, conditioning girls to do housework with boys focused on outside labor. Speaking Native languages and practicing religious or familial customs were violently punished in these Boarding Schools (Lomawaima 2018).

Ethnic Studies is the critical and interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, focusing on the experiences and perspectives of diverse Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.