Dr. Maylei Blackwell (Co-PI)

Dr. Maylei Blackwell (Co-PI) has worked with the indigenous social movements in Mexico for over twenty years. For the last ten years, she has conducted community-based and collaborative with migrant indigenous communities from Mexico and Guatemala who live and work in Los Angeles. Her research expertise focuses on the intersection of women’s rights and indigenous rights within Mexico and California as well as the global struggle for indigenous rights. She more recently has documented cultural continuity and political mobilization among Zapotecs and Mixtecs from both the northern sierra as well as the central valleys of Oaxaca as well as the increasingly Mayan diaspora from Guatemala in Los Angeles. In addition, she is a noted oral historian and author of ¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement, which was a finalist for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize and named by the Western Historical Association as one of the best book in western women and gender history. Dr. Blackwell has served as an advisor to the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations.