A Journey into Indigenous Maya Political Ontology and Epistemology

Dr. Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire follows an ancient Maya ruler’s accession to ask how human and more-than-human relations made political worlds.

Beginning in 688–690 CE, the presentation reconstructs the accession of Chak Ak’ Paat Kuy — “Red-Turkey-Crested Lizard-Owl” — to rulership. Centred on the Classic Maya polity of Sak Nikte’, the account traces the relations that transformed a man into a divine king: human overlords and vassals, supernatural patrons, ancestors, and place.

Parallels with the political worlds of the fifteenth-century K’iche’ and contemporary Q’eqchi’ Maya clarify the power of the Gods of Land and the ways Maya people have involved these mighty non-human persons in political strategy.

Drawing on A Critical Archaeology of Politics, the talk challenges presentism and asks what becomes visible when we move between ontologies and epistemologies rather than project Cartesian categories backward in time.