Indigenous peoples and higher education in Brazil and Paraná: challenges and perspectives

Abstract

This article contextualizes and reflects on the panorama of entry and stay of indigenous people in higher education in Brazil based on official data from the Ministry of Education. Such data show the significant growth in the entry of indigenous people in undergraduate courses driven by Law 12.711 / 2012 - the Quota Law, but also by the adoption of affirmative action policies by several higher education institutions, even before this law. Among these initiatives, the pioneering experience of entry and permanence of indigenous people in the state of Paraná universities stands out in this text, highlighting the challenges, advances and difficulties of almost two decades of this policy. Despite the recent and exponential growth of the indigenous presence in universities, numerous difficulties and challenges are faced, both by indigenous students and by educational institutions. The indigenous presence (or even its absence due to dropout rates) questions the university and starts to show the subtle and explicit expressions of structural racism marked in its administrative, academic, curricular organization and in social relations in the daily life of courses and institutions. Restrictions on the most appropriate reception for indigenous subjects and common challenges in the process of building dialogues and pedagogical practices that are more receptive to knowledge are evidenced at the university. Such knowledge is necessary for the realization of intercultural and multiepistemic processes in higher education. The university presents itself as a space of contradiction, of law and possibilities, to be occupied and appropriated by indigenous peoples in order to advance their struggles and resistance.