Ancestry as indigenous and decolonial epistemologies in the education of teachers working in intercultural teachers’ courses

Abstract

This article aims to discuss indigenous epistemologies, as alternative paths to interculturalizing knowledge in the education of indigenous teachers, analyzes the conception of training, present in the Pedagogical Projects of the Courses (PPC) of Indigenous Intercultural Licensure Pitakajá and Kuaba that involve the fourteen indigenous ethnicities of Ceará being coordinated by the Federal University of Ceará. The respective courses are the result of the struggles of the original peoples for a policy of teacher training for differentiated indigenous schools. The theoretical analysis is based on the concepts of indigenous ancestry, interculturality, epistemologies of the South, ecology of knowledge and teacher education, to ground what we call indigenous and decolonial epistemology. The research has a qualitative approach and uses the documentary analysis of the PPCs, which present a conception of teacher education based on the ecology of traditional and scientific knowledge, which recognize indigenous ancestry as an intercultural and decolonial potentiality of knowledge in its formative processes.