Ep 8: 'Bad Indians,' 'There There,' & 'Wandering Stars' w Dr. Dani Ahuicapahtzin Cornejo

Today’s guest is someone Colin had the very fortunate privilege of meeting at San Francisco State University over 15 years ago, when both were pursuing Master’s Degrees in the College of Ethnic Studies. As Teaching Assistants in Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade’s "Raza 580: Educational Equity" course and the East Oakland Step to College Program at Fremont High School with Jeff and Dr. Patrick “Cam” Camangian, Colin was taken aback by this brother’s deep sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and humility as it pertained to the work of supporting young people emerging from historically dispossessed communities, but also by the ways he balanced these things with an unshakeable confidence and tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. More than a decade later, today's guest played a pivotal role in supporting Colin as he transitioned into teaching at the community college level, and for this and many other reasons, Colin will forever be grateful to know and walk beside him in the deeply important and challenging work of critical, liberatory, and humanizing education, here in the East Bay on unceded Bay and Plains Miwok, Confederated Villages of Lijan, and Muwekma Ohlone Territory.  

Dr. Dani Ahuicapahtzin Cornejo (Ópata/Xicano/Picunche/Chileno) is a husband, father, son, brother, uncle and community member. He is also an Assistant Professor and chair of Ethnic Studies at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Native American Studies at UC Davis. His work is focused on the study of Indigenous holistic pedagogical strategies from a hemispheric perspective as well as the application of these strategies in the service of urban Native youth and other underserved communities in the Bay Area. He has designed and taught courses in the fields of Native American Studies, Urban Education, and Comparative Ethnic Studies, at the University of San Francisco, The University of California Davis, San Francisco State University, Chabot College and Diablo Valley College.  He has also published on topics such as Indigenous cultural reclamation and educational equity.   

Dr. Cornejo has also worked as a public school K-12 educator serving second language learners in Denver Colorado and high school students as the assistant director of the East Oakland Step to College Program. Dani has been a practitioner of the Mexicayotl tradition through Danza Azteca and the Temescalli (Sweat Lodge) since 2004 and has facilitated Nahuatl language courses for beginning speakers situated within Mexicayotl epistemologies taught through the oral traditions of Flor y Canto and Danza Azteca. 

Finally, since 2004 he has served as the co-musical director and co-producer for the Hip-Hop and World Music collective Debajo del Agua, an experience that has opened opportunities for teaching world music ensembles centered in the Indigenous and African diasporas of the Americas.

The Paper Plane is a podcast created and hosted by Colin Masashi Ehara, where he interviews people he is blessed and honored to share community with, and asks them about a book(s) that have had a transformational impact on their lives. In a society where literacy rates are steadily declining and a growing number of podcasts hosted by cishet men, un/consciously champion expressions of masculinity that come at the expense of women, femmes, and LGBTQIA2S+ (especially BIPOC) folx, this space aims to operate as a counter-narrative.

The Paper Plane is a space that intends to highlight the dire importance of relationships, community, dialogue, perpetual learning, honest expression as art, art as honest expression, and freedom for literacy and literacy for freedom. It speaks to planes of existence attached to the act of reading, but also as a metaphor for the “flights” we take as we sit in what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls “a one way interface” as readers, and how these “journeys” shape us...