People
Francisco Tandioy Janasoy
ftandioy@indiana.edu
Francisco Tandioy Jansasoy teaches Inga at Indiana University. Francisco has come to IU from the Sibundoy Valley in highland Putumayo, Colombia. A native speaker of Inga and an Inga community activist, Francisco co-founded Musu Runakuna, a political action group that works closely with Inga elders to promote Inga language, cultural expression, and land rights. Having received a Masters degree in Linguistics as well as Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Indiana University, Francisco is now enrolled as a PhD student in the department of Folklore.
John Holmes McDowell
Professor of Folklore
and Ethnomusicology
mcdowell@indiana.edu
website
John McDowell, graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Texas, acquired a lasting affection for the Andes when studying Cochabamba Quechua with Bernardo Vallejo in Austin back in the 1970s. This involvement with the language was extended through tours of ethnographic research at the other end of Quechuan geography, among the Ingas of Colombia's Sibundoy Valley, with support from a Fulbright Fellowship and other sources. In Colombia he made contact and common cause with Professor Francisco Tandioy, Inga teacher and cultural activist, and initiated a research collaboration that has endured for more than a quarter of a century now. Products of these labors include "Sayings of the Ancestors: The Spiritual Life of the Sibundoy Indians" (1989) and "So Wise Were Our Elders: Mythic Narratives of the Kamsá" (1994), both published by the University Press of Kentucky, as well as several articles in social science journals. Current research is with the Quichua Runa around Otavalo, Ecuador, with an emphasis on the folklorization of indigenous tradition.