Adriana is a PhD candidate at Harvard’s History department, where she studies colonial Latin America. Her dissertation asks how the colonial situation influenced the way 17th century indigenous Andeans recalled the pre-columbian and early colonial past. That is, how did native people’s interactions with other colonial subjects shape their notions of the past? Why were indigenous people's interpretations of the past important to the way they carved out a space for themselves in colonial society? In order to answer these questions, Adriana explores judicial, literary and material sources to identify a wide array of practices and beliefs—such as origin stories, oral histories and religious customs—that functioned as vehicles of collective and individual memories within native communities. Adriana hopes this analysis will shed light on how native people in the Andes viewed and experienced colonialism.