INDIGENOUS HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY:

APPROACHES BETWEEN MEXICO AND BRAZIL

Abstract

Indigenous higher education implemented in the 21st century established a new model of education based on the principle of interculturality, generating numerous studies that brought light to this new field of knowledge. This article aims to identify similarities and discrepancies in the experiences of two countries: whether in Mexico with the creation of indigenous intercultural universities, or in Brazil with the creation of indigenous intercultur­al degrees, both the result of State actions in response to major social mobilizations. The empirical results of several of these experiences were analyzed here through bibliograph­ical research and some interviews with administrators, which allowed the formation of a mosaic of views on these universities and degrees to analyze the experiences in both coun­tries. The study concluded that interculturality, used as the axis of this education model, revealed advancements and resistances, as it is a complex process that requires accurate observation of this new institutional field of dispute between scientific and indigenous an­cestral knowledge, which sometimes confront each other, and other times get closer. Some experience reports, especially those based on the vision of indigenous students, revealed the persistence of behaviors that hinder the decolonization of knowledge and constitute obstacles to the implementation of interculturality.

KEYWORDS: Interculturality. Indigenous Higher Education. Intercultural Universities. Intercultural Degrees.

IMAGE: Second National Meeting of Intercultural Universities (Mexico, 2023). Author: Paula Bizzi Junqueira.