The 90 minutes I spent on Tuesday, Feb. 8 at the first webinar of the Pachaysana Collective’s “Restorying Our World” series were transformative, leaving a deep impression on me about the aspects of our global society that I have the power to change.

The series, led by the Pachaysana Collective—a non-profit organization based in Ecuador that has designed study abroad programs for the University over the past few years—consists of a webinar and two workshops addressing how to enact change through storytelling. The series is co-sponsored by the College of Letters, Fries Center for Global Studies, the Resource Center, the Office for Equity and Inclusion, and the Office of Faculty Career Development and was open to both faculty and students.

“The first webinar was very focused on sharing our commitment to storytelling and how we’ve found it to be helpful,” Pachaysana Collective Resident Director Chelsea Viteri said. “The next workshops are more focused on creating stories and actually going through the practice to feel its power.”

The current “Restorying Our World” series was based, in part, from its Fall 2021 iteration, “The Unlearning Series.” I was not able to attend any of last semester’s activities, so when I received an email that the Pachaysana Collective would be leading another set of workshops this semester, I jumped at the opportunity to participate. I was particularly drawn to the organization’s mission to reimagine education as a collective creation to foster liberation and unlearn embodied and systemic injustice, and enthused to learn more about how they accomplish their mission through storytelling. According to Viteri, the Collective centers on decolonizing education, a process that they approach through creative methodologies focused on unlearning in an embodied way.

“Defining it…seems insufficient,” Viteri said. “The concept and our relationship to [decolonizing education] shifts and has been expanding. A really important part of the process is naming colonial structures that have shaped our education—not only questioning, but dismantling, ideas of universalism and the ways epistemic violence has been at the base of…traditional university and school systems.”

My attention was also captured by the emphasis on embodied methods for pursuing Pachaysana’s mission. During the “Restorying Our World” webinar, the group engaged in two activities where we closed our eyes and breathed deeply in an attempt to feel more connected to our own bodies and the physical spaces that each of us occupied.

“We don’t believe in objective knowledge,” Viteri said.“We think that everything is grounded in a body and in a territory. We believe that our bodies have wisdom and our bodies have memory and our bodies are also a space of knowing, so creating spaces so that our bodies are also in the conversation.”

While decolonizing education has always been at the core of Pachaysana’s mission, Viteri shared that the concept of unlearning has become part of its philosophy over the last few years. 

“We encountered a moment of reflection where…we  needed more tools and came into a lot of conflict…in terms of how we should even approach topics of gender,” Viteri said. “We created this space for our own staff called ‘our unlearning space’ that helped us really to acknowledge that we have a lot of bias, prejudice, limitations that we need to actively be confronting and working on, rather than assuming that because we work in this very cool organization, we know what we’re doing.”

Viteri emphasized that it was important to address and work through conflict instead of avoiding it.

“We don’t shy away from conflict,” Viteri said. “We center care and…start exploring conflict rather than already jumping to solutions.”

Viteri outlined the practical fronts on which Pachaysana carries out its mission. Firstly, the organization partners with a few indigenous communities in Ecuador to embark on creative projects, often involving theater, that address issues specific to each community.

“We have a history of relationships with the communities that we work with,” Viteri said. “We don’t work with a ton of communities because we feel it’s more sustainable to nurture and tend and be accountable to the relationships that we have.”

In addition, the Pachaysana Collective also works with universities like Wesleyan to design study abroad programs with a focus on creating a reciprocal relationship between students and the communities they engage with. Viteri explained the mission of their main study abroad program, “Rehearsing Change.”

“There’s discomfort in how study abroad tends to relate to communities, particularly marginalized communities in Ecuador,” Viteri said. “[Students see them] more [as] study subjects than communities that have knowledge and autonomy. [We hope] to create spaces where communities are benefiting from study abroad and for it not to be structured as something that international students come and consume and then leave.”

In addition to the impact of storytelling, Viteri also shared about the importance of the power of play to her pursuit of liberation as an individual and a member of the Pachaysana Collective.

“In how we think of liberation and social justice and resisting systems of oppression, play can be an incredible ally because play is creative,” Viteri said. “It moves us from a space of resisting to a space where we can generate alternatives and reimagine our world and the ways that we want to be and create a path from our radical dreaming to where we are….inviting everyone to bring that sense of play and curiosity and vulnerability to these spaces of learning and unlearning can be like a healing salve.”

The “Restorying Our World” series will continue with two more workshops on Tuesday, March 1 and Monday, April 4. Viteri highlighted that the Pachaysana Collective is also eager to partner with individuals and groups who would like to engage in decolonizing education, embodied unlearning or making change through storytelling, beyond its workshops and study abroad programs. Relevant contact information can be found on the organization’s website.

 

Sulan Bailey can be reached at sabailey@wesleyan.edu.