Golden animals: A lyric essay on animacy and resilience

Amidst crises of species loss and climate collapse, it is heartening to recall that a dialogue about global history, the animacy of the world, and the place of human beings within it is unfinished and ongoing. When I travel for fieldwork in Saraguro, Ecuador, different subjects push to the fore. With my friends Benigno, Ana Victoria, and the members of the women's cooperative Las Mujeres de Teresa de Calcuta as my primary collaborators, we have together explored beadwork and the practice of art in the unfolding of identity for Indigenous people in the transnational world; differing rhythms of agricultural work in Ecuador and the United States; biological diversity and invasive species; cultivating cross-cultural knowing, and more. In 2017, Benigno directed my attention to golden animals tales he had heard from others, and from his own life. When Benigno and other community members tell these stories, they embody ideas about the persistence of history and icons of power from the past. The theme of his story revolves around animate energies embedded in the natural and cultural landscapes in which he dwells.