“Why can't we admire our own?”: Indigenous youth, farming, and education in the peruvian andes

In the Mantaro Valley of Peru, Wanka youth are raised participating in family and community-scale farming. When viewed as an Indigenous and rural cultural practice, farming can be seen as reflective of an ecologically-conscious and spiritually-based system of reciprocity. Central to this system is the teaching of values that emphasize interrelationships between human beings, their lands, histories, and foods. At the same time, farming is also viewed in Peruvian dominant society as a peasant activity of the uneducated poora stigmatization that distances the rural Indigenous farmer from mainstream notions of progress, development, and modernity. In this chapter, these tensions are highlighted through ethnographic research on the experiences of Indigenous youth who participate in educational opportunities that will influence who they want to be and what their communities will become.