Toward decolonial community psychologies from Abya Yala.

The epistemologies generated from colonized spaces such as Latin America and the Caribbean have been excluded from the dominant Euro- and US-centric discourses of community psychology. Modern science is compartmentalized into disciplines forming silos and boundaries among them. Historically, psychology has been authored by European or North American White men, claiming superior expertise as detached researchers who study, analyze, interpret, and represent the inferior objects of study. Therefore, we should ask: what type of knowledges does psychology generate, with whom, and for what? Our praxis constitutes a political act which should question and challenge coloniality. In Latin America and the Caribbean, we became increasingly aware of the importance of generating knowledges about the communal (lo común) based on the experiences of Indigenous people in the Americas. Epistemologies from Abya Yala delink from the hegemonic, US-Eurocentric paradigms and address the structural violence of the neoliberal system. To co-create an inclusive and pluriversal discipline of psychology, we need to disrupt the linguistic colonization executed by the imposition of the English language legitimized as universal. We ought to convey the many examples of epistemologies and praxes from Abya Yala that contribute to the co-construction of decolonial psychologies emerging from their own localities and cultures. We propose counterepistemologies that disrupt a monocultural, monolingustic, universal, and hegemonic epistemology. This paper reviews selected decolonial contributions from Abya Yala and sketches pathways toward the making of decolonial community psychologies anchored in pluriversal ecologies of knowledges.

Indigenous community psychologies, decolonization, and radical imagination within ecologies of knowledges.

As the American Psychological Association Taskforce on Indigenous Psychology acknowledges, fidelity to the inalienable right to self-determination is the ethical foundation of Indigenous psychology. The task of decolonizing psychology is not only about divesting from Eurocentric paradigms that have controlled and limited Indigenous wellbeing, but producing new paradigms founded on Indigenous knowledges. The Indigenous paradigm of social and emotional wellbeing is both a new therapeutic practice and theory of wellbeing. As the exploration of the domains of SEWB has shown, findings from the National Empowerment Project indicate that strengthening a connection to culture is identified as of highest importance to the flourishing of Indigenous individuals, families, and communities. Wellbeing in Abya Yala (the Americas) is conceived as Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir and Maori constructs of wellbeing as Hauora. These transnational wellbeing conceptualizations can be situated within a larger global health movement, which is centered on strengthening Indigenous cultures of wellbeing, and sustainable planet-people relationships. Indigenous community psychologies are not anthropocentric and are centered on the sacredness of nature, the cultivation of spirituality, and accountability to maintain harmonious ecosystem relationships. Indigenous community psychologies from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Mexico are brought in plurilogue envisioning international solidarity networks that engage communities, activists, and committed student generations.

Making the road caminando de otra manera: Co-constructing decolonial community psychologies from the Global South.

Current discussion on coloniality dismantles structures embedded in neoliberal capitalism that maintain and perpetuate social pathologies. Theories and praxes emerging from Abya Yala (North, Central, and South America) provide academic and nonacademic contributions to co-construct community psychologies de otra manera (otherwise). These accountable ways of knowing and acting in cultural context and local place, become ways of making counterculture to inform decolonial community psychologies. The epistemologies of the Global South have produced invaluable teachings for transformative revisions of community psychology within frameworks that go beyond liberation and toward decoloniality. Activist women and decolonial feminists from the Global South, contest patriarchal rationality and universalism and co-construct new ways of being, thinking-feeling, sentipensar, and acting. Decolonial paradigms weave networks of solidarity with communities in their struggles to sustain Indigenous cosmovisions, delinking from western-centric ideologies that are not anthropocentric and promote sustainability, epistemic and ecological justice, and Sumak Kawsay/Buen Vivir (wellbeing) that includes the rights of the Earth. This paper deepens into decolonial community psychologies from Abya Yala that are making the road caminando (walking) de otra manera by applying methodologies of affective conviviality with communities, sentipensando, and co-authoring collective stories that weave pluriversal solidary networks within ecologies of praxes into colorful tapestries of liberation. These are the proposed coordinates to sketch pathways toward decoloniality.

Dissident women's letter writing as decolonial plurilogues of relational solidarities for epistemic justice.

Braiding our words, "dissi-dance," and desires, this article engages how various social actors, and communities-which we are a part of and belong to-challenge structural violence, oppression, inequity, and social, racial, and epistemic injustice. We thread these reflections through our written words, in subversive letters which we offer in the form of a written relational conversation among us: a plurilogue that emerges in response to our specific locations, commitments, and refusals, as well as dissents. Our stories and process of dissent within the various locations, relationships, and contexts that we occupy served as the yarn and needle to thread our stories, posed questions and reflections. Braiding, threading and weaving together, we animate deep decolonial inquiries within ourselves, and our different cultural contexts and countries. Refusing individualism-the illusions of objectivity as distance, the academic as expert, and the exile of affect and emotion on academic pages-we choose to occupy academic writing and ask: What if academic writing were stitched with blood and laughter, relationships and insights, rage and incites? What if, at the nexus of critical psychology and decolonizing feminism, we grew an "embodied praxis?" Unlike academic writing, traditionally designed to camouflage affect, connection, relationality and subjectivity, these letters are unapologetically saturated in care and wisdom toward a narrative-based embodied practice: decolonial plurilogues of relational solidarities for epistemic justice. Our plurilogue of dissent offers a view to advance community research and action with goals of liberation, decoloniality, and community wellness.

Engaging the Struggle for Decolonial Approaches to Teaching Community Psychology.

Community psychology's history has traditionally been described within the context of U.S. history, silencing contributions from people of color from the Americas, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Africa. In a MA/PhD specialization in Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, Indigenous Psychologies, and Ecopsychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, we are attempting to steer into critical dialogues about modernity, coloniality, and decoloniality, closely examining our curriculum and pedagogy, including our approaches to fieldwork and research. Turning to Indigenous psychologists, decolonial and critical race theorists, and cultural workers within the U.S. and from the Global South, we are attempting to challenge coloniality in the social sciences, community psychology, and in our own thinking and teaching to unmask hegemonic assumptions and open space for decolonial theory and practice. In this paper, we explore ways in which we are working with our graduate students and faculty to co-construct a decolonial curriculum that integrates decoloniality so that knowledges from historically silenced locations, as well as anti-racist and other decolonial praxes can co-exist and thrive.