Paper short abstract:

I will focus on indigenous academics’ experiences in universities in Brazil that think, do and live decoloniality. I propose an analytical and emotional exercise of expanding the notion of decoloniality through the lived experiences of indigenous academics beyond a Western-centric concept.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I focus on indigenous academics’ experiences in universities in Brazil that think, do and live decoloniality. I propose an analytical and emotional exercise of expanding the notion of decolonial praxis through the lived experiences of indigenous academics, specifically through their ongoing efforts of decolonising academic knowledge. The basis of this exercise is to distance decoloniality from a theoretical concept. Move beyond an idea of just one more concept to be added to the Western academic vocabulary, reinscribing more power to the way Western intellectuals (and those trained in Western-based educational systems) define the world. It is more than an academic effort and detaching from curriculum tethers; it is a way of knowing, doing and living that goes against coloniality. This paper will be centred by the testimonies and reflections of indigenous academics I had contact with during my fieldwork in Brazil between 2020 and 2022 about their perspectives on decoloniality as an ongoing process since European colonisation in Latin America and as a process of ‘healing’. I will analyse how coloniality is still present and felt in the indigenous academic’s experiences as a process of silencing and imposing universal knowledge. Decoloniality is a an ongoing project that depends on the local histories and the context in which decolonial undertakings materialise. It does not fit the Western universal and totality model, but it connects to multiple temporalities, knowledges and praxis of living. This is central to understanding the experience of decoloniality of the indigenous in Brazil.