Paper short abstract:

Problems such as deforestation, uprooting and generational ruptures have led colombian indigenous communities to transform educational practices in innovative ways towards the recognition of the territory and the value of local knowledge while assuring interaction and spiritual guidance by elders.

Paper long abstract:

The processes of appropriation of education by the indigenous communities has a long history of seeking autonomy to manage their own school education. This process is already showing results in the indigenous peoples of Colombia where many have formulated their community education plans on paper. It is in school practice that creative ways must be developed to decolonize education. An educational institution in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, managed by an Arhuaca community, has focused its efforts on maintaining the identity and spirit of collectivity through education. The Koreguaje people living in a deforestation zone have sought to strengthen the link with the territory through knowledge about the forest and trees, and in multi-ethnic communities in the Amazon, they seek to strengthen especially the traditional knowledge related to the territory and sacred rituals.

These cases show their particularities but also have some elements in common, such as fostering cultural identity, the use of the mother tongue, the sense of collectivity, the importance of knowledge about the territory and biodiversity to ensure physical and cultural survival, and the rooting of young people to their territory as well as respect for the elders. In these experiences, teachers are generally people with great sensitivity towards cultural permanence and curricular innovation.

In these contexts, school education and teachers and their own pedagogical strategies that articulate their own knowledge, play an important role in the governance of the territories and the construction of critical positions that allow the advancement of innovative proposals