About

Gustavo Verdesio is an Associate Professor in the Native American Studies department at the University of Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, earned in 1992, with a background in Romance Languages and Literatures. His academic focus is on Native American Studies, and he is affiliated with the Department of American Culture. His office is located at 812 East Washington Street, 4108 MLB, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1275, and he can be contacted via email or phone at 734.647.2645. Further details about his research and contributions are not provided on the page.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Humanities
• Anthropology
• Art
• Law
• Political economy
• Ethnology
• Archaeology
• Philosophy
• Geography
• History

Selected publications

• Despojo sin fin: la reemergencia charrúa en Uruguay a la luz del colonialismo de pioneros

  Corpus · 2023 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Humanities
  • Political Science

  En la sociedad uruguaya, que se imagina como un país sin indios, el surgimiento de grupos activistas que se autoadscriben como indígenas (o de ascendencia indígena) ha provocado un amplio espectro de reacciones que van desde la burla hasta la ira. La administración estatal y algunos de los antropólogos más venerados (entre los cuales se encuentran Daniel Vidart y Renzo Pi Hugarte), así como el público en general, se muestran reacios a reconocer la legitimidad de sus reclamos. Esta negativa tiene graves consecuencias jurídicas en un país que no cuenta con un marco legal específico para tratar cuestiones relacionadas con los pueblos originarios, ya que no ha ratificado el Convenio 169 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT) —el marco jurídico sobre los derechos de los pueblos indígenas más importante en el ámbito internacional debido a su carácter vinculante para los Estados que lo ratifican—. En este artículo, discuto la pertinencia de los estudios coloniales para la comprensión de algunos procesos históricos en el Cono Sur. También intento arrojar algo de luz sobre el caso de Uruguay a través del análisis de la noción marxista de acumulación primitiva, que explica el proceso de despojo que sufrieron los diversos grupos indígenas que poblaron el territorio antes de la llegada de los colonos europeos. Con suerte, el análisis permitirá comprender las reacciones —a veces airadas y violentas— de la sociedad uruguaya, ante la reemergencia de colectivos indígenas en un país donde se pensaba que se encontraban extintos. La reaparición charrúa en la arena pública pone en duda la legitimidad de la posesión de la tierra tanto por parte del Estado como de sus habitantes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rock and Pop across Cultural Boundaries

  2022-05-23

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Mapping the Geopolitics of Contact

  2022-05-23

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Acknowledgments

  University of Texas Press eBooks · 2022

  • Political Science
  • Political Science

  T his book had many previous lives, all of them traversed by the vibrant conversations and exchanges I had with colleagues and friends during the time it took to get to this, now published, version.Although it would be impossible to include in these acknowledgments everyone who played a role in this journey, I still would like to recognize some of those who did.The fi rst seeds of this project lay in the years I spent as a graduate student at Princeton University.I'm grateful to Gabriela Nouzeilles

  DOI

• Rethinking Indigenous and Collaborative Archaeologies

  Interventions · 2021 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Geography
  • Sociology

  In this essay I will try to respond to Gnecco’s thoughtful criticism of Indigenous archaeology by reflecting on the ways in which the incorporation of indigenous peoples to the archaeological process might change our perceptions, and the production, of time – both the one produced by the discipline’s discourse and practices and the one that is experienced by human beings during the archaeological process itself, from the elaboration of the project to the publication of a paper. But before that, I propose a propaedeutic step: to question an assumption shared by both historiography and archaeology, namely, the capacity of those disciplines to reconstruct, from a series of fragments of the past, the totality of a bygone world. This intellectual operation may help both collaborative and indigenous archaeology to develop their full potential for the study of the indigenous pasts, while avoiding some of the traps that characterize the history and current practice of the discipline. Only after that will one be prepared to propose a phenomenological version of archaeology as a mode of knowledge production that could yield a different notion of time that does not go against the needs and agendas of indigenous peoples of the present. Finally, I will discuss the ethical and political implications of research production about indigenous pasts and the responsibility of disciplines and scholars before the indigenous peoples of the present, in order to help disciplinary practices to be more sensitive and friendly to their struggles.

  PublisherDOI

• It comes with the territory

  2020-11-02

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter reviews what disciplines other than colonial studies produced by literary scholars have to say about indigenous materialities. It offers a general idea about the research produced on stone architecture and monumentality, diverse forms of organizing and exploiting the land, and different kinds of indigenous objects. It will be shown how, in most cases, the knowledge produced about indigenous material production is characterized by a Western gaze that has a serious impact on the way in which said production is represented and understood. It also discusses the ways in which different disciplines in Uruguay have dealt with the ultimate material manifestation of indigeneity: indigenous bodies themselves. A brief analysis of some cases of repatriation of human remains (in Uruguay, Argentina and the US) and of the recent reemergence of the Charrua Indians in Uruguay, illustrate how the scholarship produced by a significant number of academics on indigenous peoples of the past has serious consequences for present-day indigenous peoples.

  PublisherDOI

• Endless dispossession: the Charrua re-emergence in Uruguay in the light of settler colonialism

  Settler Colonial Studies · 2020 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Law

  In a country like Uruguay, that imagines itself as a ‘country without Indians’, the emergence of groups of activists who claim to be of indigenous descent has provoked a series of reactions that cover a wide spectrum that goes from mockery to wrath. The State and some of the most revered anthropologists (like Daniel Vidart and Renzo Pi Hugarte), as well as the general public, are reluctant to recognize their legitimacy. This has serious legal consequences in that country, which does not count with a specific legal framework to deal with indigenous matters due to the fact that Uruguay has not ratified the ILO Convention number 169, which is the most important international piece of indigenous legislation that has binding power for the ratifying nations.In this paper, I will discuss the pertinence of settler colonial studies for the understanding of some historical processes in the Southern Cone. I will also try to shed some light on the Uruguayan case through an analysis of the importance of the Marxian notion of primitive accumulation, which explains the process of dispossession suffered by the diverse indigenous groups that populated the land before the arrival of European settlers. Hopefully, this will shed some light on the sometimes angry and violent reactions of Uruguayan mainstream society to the reemergence of indigenous collectives in a country where they were thought to be extinct: their reappearance puts into question the legitimate possession of the land by the Uruguayan State and its inhabitants.

  PublisherDOI

• INVISIBLE AT A GLANCE

  2020-10-09

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Authority and Legitimacy in Political and Social Archaeology

  2020-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Colonialidad, colonialismo y estudios coloniales: hacia un enfoque comparativo de inflexión subalternista

  Tabula rasa · 2018-07-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Tabula Rasa es una revista científica del área de las ciencias sociales con una periodicidad trimestral, dedicada principalmente a las disciplinas de la Antropología, Historia, Sociología, Trabajo Social, Geografía Humana y Estudios Culturales.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gareth Williams

  5 shared

• Kate Jenckes

  University of California, Riverside

  5 shared

• Cristina Moreiras

  University of California, Riverside

  5 shared

• Nilo Couret

  University of California, Riverside

  4 shared

• Daniel Nemser

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  4 shared

• Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola

  Emory University

  4 shared

• Victoria Langland

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  4 shared

• David Kazanjian

  4 shared

Labs

• Native American StudiesPI

Education

• Ph D, Hispanic Studies

  Northwestern University

  1992