Qui'chi Patlan Qui'chi Patlan Qui’chi Patlan is an interdisciplinary linguistic anthropologist. He/they received their PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in Linguistic Anthropology (2024) with specialized training in Quechua/Kichwa studies, Indigenous spoken and visual art, hemispheric migration studies, transnational alliances, media studies, and revitalization.
Their research focuses on differing pathways Kichwa or Runa speakers from the Andean town of Otavalo (Ecuador) take to generate knowledge, power, equality, and freedom in the context of their global Indigenous market economy. With a special interest in verbal and visual art, gifts, crafts, and market goods, their research highlights the often-understudied importance Runa dialogues and material exchanges with other Indigenous groups (i.e., in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico) play in shaping power and Indigeneity within Ecuador and across geopolitical and linguistic borders. Their doctoral fieldwork is based upon a cumulative 17 months of ethnographic field-work observations in the rural and urban sectors of Otavalo. By examining numerous conversations with Runa speaking entrepreneurs across generations and trades in Otavalo’s global tourism economy, his dissertation sheds light on reasons why Runa individuals are experiencing shifts in cultural knowledge expertise and economic power in the face of rapid urbanization, cultural Hispanicization, geopolitical restrictions of cultural and migratory movement, and most recently in the wake of a rising Ecuadorian Narco-State (post-Covid 19).
Born into a Narco-trafficking and Chicano/a gang family in the early 1990s and in the inner-city barrios/hoods of Boyle Heights and Compton, California, Qui'chi is also a first generation, Mexican-American Indian, two-spirit, and a polylingual artist-activist. He is spoken word emcee and co-founder of Indigenous Movement Crew ATX, Austin’s first pro-BIPOC and LGTBQ2s+ intergenerational running and wellness crew. They dedicate their time outside academia supporting individuals from the Global Majority reclaim their bodies, gendered identities, oral histories, and voices…teaching them about the healing power of the arts, prison abolitionism, harm-reduction, and strategies for reintegrating de-carcerated individuals into their families and communities.
Masters in Linguistic Anthropology, 2017, University of Texas at Austin
Bachelors in Anthropology, 2015, University of California, Los Angeles