Moving Stories: Displacement and Return in the Narrative Production of Yaqui Identity

Among the Yaqui Indians of Mexico, discourses that inscribe ethnicity connect space, place, and history. In this article, I examine narratives about the Yaqui exile at the turn of the twentieth century. I argue that Yaqui identity and concepts of “homeland” are imagined through narratives about movement. Memories of displacement and return, and everyday talk about travel, link space to fields of power and imbue the homeland with a set of intense cultural meanings.