Anthony Aveni Lecture Series: Victor Montejo
Thursday, April 3, 2025 4:30–6:00 PM
Description
NAST invites you to the Anthony Aveni Lecture Series with Dr. Victor Montejo. Lecture details will be forthcoming.Victor Montejo (Jakaltek Maya from Guatemala) is a renowned socio-cultural anthropologist, scholar, novelist, poet, activist, journalist, and important Maya public intellectual, specializing in Mesoamerican Indigenous cultures. Montejo's work integrates discourses on human rights, migration, Indigenous worldviews, and sustainable development. His contributions to understanding indigenous worldviews, such as the Popol Vuh, have been crucial in centering non-Western perspectives in academia through publications such as, Voices from Exile, Maya Intellectual Renaissance, and Mayalogue: An Interactionist Theory of Indigenous Cultures. He served as Guatemala’s Minister of Peace and a congressman, where he championed Indigenous rights, including establishing the National Day of Indigenous People of Guatemala and advancing reparation programs for civil war victims. Dr. Montejo also co-founded the American Anthropological Association's Commission for Human Rights, oversaw the implementation of Guatemala's peace accords as Minister of Peace, and continues to advocate for Indigenous self-representation through his leadership in the pan-Maya movement. As a Fulbright Scholar and award-winning writer, Montejo’s efforts have helped bridge Indigenous and Western perspectives and have worked to decolonize scholarship more broadly.