Presentation short abstract

The paper argues for new concepts and practices that translate alternative borderscape epistemologies into publicly accessible and meaningful formats. To address this need, I introduce Aztec-Mayan dance as a critical lens.

Presentation long abstract

Fortification of the US-Mexico border has irreversibly altered the social and ecological fabric of this once connected landscape. Border architecture fragments habitats, severs ecological corridors, and impedes both natural and social processes. These disruptions undermine the landscape’s resilience and diminish the capacity of its communities to adapt to environmental and socio-political change. The paper argues for new concepts and practices that translate alternative borderscape epistemologies into publicly accessible and meaningful formats. To address this need, I introduce Aztec-Mayan dance as a critical lens. Dance movements, embodied-narrative structures, and indigenous cosmologies offer a powerful medium to reimagine cultural histories and multispecies relationships. Situated within aesthetic and multispecies theory, and grounded in a landscape-scale approach, the research foregrounds entanglement, co-dependence and care as central to resilient futures. By mobilising the arts as a site of critical and creative possibility, the paper demonstrates how Indigenous performance can challenge dominant border imaginaries and cultivate alternative narratives that envision relationality and ecological continuity anew.