ETHNO-EDUCATION AND DECOLONIALITY IN THE AMERICAS: CRITICAL INTERCULTURALITY, SOUTHERN EPISTEMOLOGIES AND EDUCATIONAL JUSTICE
In line with the theme of the 59th International Congress of Americanists, Tradition and Innovation: The Memories of the Americas, this symposium starts from the recognition that the historical memories, ancestral knowledges, and educational experiences of the continent’s peoples constitute not only a cultural legacy but also living sources of knowledge production, pedagogical innovation, and social transformation. In a context marked by profound inequalities, human mobility, technological transformations, sociocultural conflicts, and disputes over the recognition of collective identities, it is essential to open academic spaces that allow for a critical rethinking of education from situated, plural and decolonial perspectives.
Although in recent decades various Latin American and Caribbean countries have promoted intercultural education policies, the recognition of collective rights, and the strengthening of cultural diversity, forms of coloniality of power, of knowledge, and of being persist, continuing to reproduce epistemic exclusions, structural inequalities, and processes of racialization that particularly affect indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and other historically subalternized groups. Consequently, an important challenge remains in understanding how educational institutions, communities, and territories can contribute to building more democratic forms of knowledge production, circulation, and legitimation.
The symposium proposes an international space for interdisciplinary dialogue aimed at critically examining the relationships among ethno-education, critical interculturality, Southern epistemologies, decolonial pedagogies, and educational justice. It seeks to foster the exchange of research, experiences, and reflections analyzing the multiple ways in which community knowledges, collective memories, territorial pedagogies, and intercultural educational practices engage with the contemporary challenges facing American societies.
The proposal draws on the contributions of Aníbal Quijano on the coloniality of power; Catherine Walsh and critical interculturality; Nelson Maldonado-Torres and the coloniality of being; Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Southern epistemologies; Paulo Freire and critical pedagogy; Frantz Fanon and the decolonization of subjectivity; Achille Mbembe and contemporary dynamics of racialization; bell hooks and education as a practice of freedom; Paul Gilroy and diasporic Afro-epistemologies; as well as on the contributions of Juan García Salazar and León Castro for understanding community memory, pedagogical marronage, and Afro-descendant philosophies developed in Latin America.
The symposium hopes to bring together theoretical research, empirical studies, innovative educational experiences, public policy analysis, comparative research, and community practices that strengthen the debate on curricular justice, anti-racist education, intercultural teacher training, decolonization of the curriculum, the recovery of historical memories, and processes of identity construction from critical perspectives.
The symposium is open to researchers, teachers, graduate students, community leaders, and representatives of social organizations from different countries of the Americas interested in contributing to the construction of an international research agenda that strengthens academic cooperation, intercultural dialogue, and the plural production of knowledge as foundations for an education committed to equity, human rights, diversity, and social justice.
