The University Libraries and the Quechua Program, housed in the Latin American and Latinx Studies Center (LALSC), share a common goal: to include Indigenous cinema in the Libraries collections. Purchased by the Libraries, the movies highlight topics of interest to Indigenous communities placing their voices on center stage, and giving them space to tell their stories.

The Indigenous Cinema collection has amassed movies from different regions in the Americas, including The Milk of Sorrow (2009) which follows a woman in fear of having contracted an illness from her mother’s breast milk as a result of her being raped during the Peruvian Civil Wars; Weaving Stories (2015) which explores the daily life of women weavers in the Andean region of Bolivia; and I Am Andean (2008), a documentary about two dancers based in New York who return to Peru to reconnect with their roots and dance.

In addition to collaborating with the CU Boulder’s departments and programs to host these events, librarians at the Libraries have a research project underway that aims to enrich Colorado’s Indigenous cinema collection. Through conversations with directors and creators of Indigenous cinema, the outreach project explores how indigenous movies are streamed, how they are distributed to various mainstream vendors, and how the streaming services represent Indigenous communities.

“Streaming services are a popular way to view theatrical and academic films that are assigned in a course. The Libraries’ streaming video collections provide students easy access to films they need for their courses as well as for entertainment,” said Arthur Aguilera, collection development librarian. “However, they often lack representation from Indigenous voices. Our project aims to understand how we can change this, including working directly with Indigenous communities to acquire films.”

The Libraries are also acquiring Indigenous literature from regions from Latin America, especially Quechua literature in bilingual and trilingual editions to support the Quechua Program. As one of the most vibrant languages—with nearly eight million speakers in the Americas—Quechua offers essential insight into non-Western cultures and provides students with a new lens for viewing the world and its unique cultures.

“One of the goals of the Libraries is to build collections that support scholarship and research,” said Kathia Ibacache, romance languages librarian. “When librarians support academic units that consider Indigenous knowledge with targeted collection development, they are also helping build bridges of cultural competence and awareness of languages, cultures and ways of knowing that are different than our own.”

The Libraries and the Quechua program have also launched a Quechua film series this fall to stream three films acquired by the library’s indigenous film collection. The series kicked off on Sept. 28 with the movie Mothers of the Land (2019), directed by brothers Diego and Àlvaro Sarmiento, which tells the story of five women working the Andean highlands traditionally and organically.

Accenting the Andean worldview that there is a strong interrelation between women and the earth, the film explores how the women, connected with the land through bonds of sisterhood, take up the role as its protectors in a world impacted by the growing industrialization of agriculture.

The second film, Mama Irene: Healer of the Andes (2022), directed by Elisabeth Möhlmann and Bettina Ehrhardt, follows Mama Irene, an 84-year-old Peruvian healer whose craft draws upon endangered indigenous knowledge and traditions. The date, time and location of this screening will be announced later.

The final film will be streamed on Nov. 16. Directed by Àlvaro Delgado-Aparicio, Retablo (2017) is set in the remote mountains of Peru, where a young man named Segundo prepares to follow his father’s footsteps in the traditional folk art of crafting artisan story-boxes. The weight of carrying the family legacy falls heavy on Segundo’s shoulders as he contends with his religious landscape after stumbling upon a secret kept by his father. More information about this screening will be announced closer to the date.