Indigenous University Ways of Knowing
There are growing efforts among Indigenous Peoples and communities to create their own universities to foster educational structures that center Indigenous ways of knowing and worldviews. These universities are both a reaffirmation of local knowledge and an “alternative” to Western state-based colonial educational institutions, which often uphold and promote settler colonial logics that marginalizes Indigenous epistemologies and ways of knowing. As a result of this colonial violence, there have been efforts to decolonize academia.
To that end, this proposal seeks to invite representatives from two Indigenous universities. The first is the Ixil University in Guatemala founded in 2011 to promote Maya ancestral knowledge and worldviews, particularly against the invasion of extractivist industries. The second is the Centro Universitario Comunal (CUC) San Andrés Solaga in Oaxaca Mexico. As part of La Universidad Autónoma Comunal de Oaxaca, CUC Solaga was founded in 2020 and promotes the use of Indigenous epistemologies to address social, cultural and environmental issues affecting Indigenous communities in Oaxaca. If the proposal is approved, we will send out formal invitations to the universities. The objective is to have two representatives of these universities travel to UCSB to give workshops on Indigenous knowledge and their respective universities. The expected outcomes include having workshops and group discussions regarding Indigenous worldviews, decolonizing knowledge, and developing pedagogical techniques and teaching methods that can better serve UCSB’s diverse student body and train future generations of scholars in critical and thoughtful ways.
