Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses indigenous children's early education in urban Bogota. By presenting three cases of Casas de Pensamiento Indigena, we reflect on the notion of being an indigenous children in Bogota.

Paper long abstract:

This proposal aims to present a few tensions and contradictions when it comes to question global policies and local interpretations related to indigenous children and ECEC services. What it means to attend to young children from indigenous communities in Bogota. Could early childhood education and care (ECEC) services be reduced to ethnic backgrounds, as is the case of Casas de Pensamiento Indígena (CPI)—indigenous childcare services. Considering all this, it was decided to do fieldwork to understand the daily life of the children attending these services in Bogota and what this means for them. Through an exploration of policy documents and a multimodal methodology (video-observation, focused observation and interviews) in three of Bogota's CPI, we attempt to understand what it means to educate and care for young children from minority groups. The central question lies in a phenomenological critique of the permorming of an institutional indigenism, or how caregivers and indigenous children face an institutional script that asks them to interpret an institutionalized indigenism.