The University is Indigenous Territory

trajectories and experiences of indigenous professors in demarcation, territoriality, and the production of plural epistemologies in higher education

Abstract

This article is a conversation and a joint effort with Prof. Adriana Kaingang and Prof. Rivelino Barreto, the first permanent indigenous professors at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). Our objective is to analyze their arrival at the institution as professors as a process of historical conquest and demarcation of higher education by indigenous peoples in Brazil, thus reflecting on the university as indigenous territory. The university becomes the result of new and multiple experiences of territorialities, demarcation of its space, and agency in the co-construction, sharing, and production of already consolidated or new epistemologies. Therefore, it is important to understand the trajectory of these professors, based on the epistemologies from which they are thinking and feeling, and how they experience the academic space.