Building on the Queer Indigenous Movement in the Americas

"Uniting to Resist Attacks on Our Land & Identities: Building on the Queer Indigenous Movement in the Americas" Join us on Monday, October 30th for a presentation by Gaspar Sánchez. UWM Student Union is located at 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd. In 2003, Gaspar Sánchez dropped out of the fifth grade and became a full-time member of COPINH (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Indígenas y Populares de Honduras), learning about its anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and anti-capitalist struggles from beloved founder and Indigenous feminist leader, Berta Cáceres. Since 2014 Sánchez has served on COPINH’s leadership team as the Sexual Diversity & Rights Equality Coordinator. COPINH is the first Indigenous organization in Latin America to establish LGBTQ issues as a pillar of its work. Sánchez also hosts a radio program, Los Colores de Wiphala, that discusses human rights with an emphasis on the LGBTQ community. He leads community trainings on Indigenous rights, territorial defense, and protecting Mother Nature’s common goods under siege by extractivist projects. He accompanies legal processes in support of Indigenous humans rights defenders and against state actors and corporations that have committed crimes in Lenca territories. Sánchez is a popular educator with COPINH’s Tomás García Formation School which works to shape the next generation of young Indigenous leadership. He also serves as a spiritual guide for the Lenca people in their collective efforts to recuperate historical memory through processes of life, land defense, and ancestral practices. Sánchez has represented COPINH all over the world from Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, and Brazil, to the United States and the United Nations. This event is Co-Sponsored by: UWM Department of Spanish and Portuguese and UWM Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latinx Studies, Electa Quinney Institute at UW-Milwaukee, UWM Roberto Hernández Center, University of WI-Milwaukee's Center for International Education, and LGBT Studies.