Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines how Indigenous Universities in Mexico challenge epistemic oppression and transform decolonial knowledge. By centering Indigenous knowledge systems, communal learning, and anticolonial resistance, they disrupt Western academia, foster epistemic humility and dialogues of knowledge.

Contribution long abstract:

Indigenous knowledge systems have historically been erased through processes of epistemicides. While decolonial theories aim at incorporating Indigenous and marginalised knowledge in their modes of production, they often lack reflexion on mechanisms of epistemic oppression. Within this context, Indigenous Universities represent a critical step towards autonomous knowledge production through anticolonial resistance.

This paper explores how two Indigenous Universities in Mexico challenge these silences and propose a transformative approach to decolonial knowledge production. Through anticolonial epistemic resistance, these universities disrupt Western systems of knowledge by foregrounding local histories and alternative epistemologies.

Firstly, it examines how the Universidad Autónoma Comunal de Oaxaca and Universidad Campesina Indígena en Red in Mexico navigate silenced histories, disrupt hegemonic academic practices and centre Indigenous knowledge systems. They offer a critique of the predominant academic model through their horizontal organizational structures, communal learning, and research grounded in local fights for indigenous rights, territory and the recognition of ancestral and oral knowledge.

Secondly, it draws on pluritopic hermeneutics to reveal how Indigenous Universities challenge traditional academic knowledge production, advocating for deprofessionalised and anticolonial approaches to decolonial thought.

Lastly, it shows how they offer a new perspective on epistemic decolonialisation to decolonial discourses within Western academia by centring marginalised voices, highlighting the necessity of epistemic humility and recognising the practices of anticolonial movements as theories in their own right in order to engage with historically silenced and invisible forms of knowledge.