Unsilencing Indigenous Knowledge: Decolonial Challenges to Sociological Knowledge Production through Indigenous Universities.

Indigenous knowledge systems have historically been erased through processes of epistemicide and systematic epistemic oppression. This paper explores how Indigenous Universities in Mexico challenge these silences and propose a transformative approach to sociological knowledge production. Through anticolonial epistemic resistance, these universities disrupt Western systems of knowledge by foregrounding local histories and alternative epistemologies.

Firstly, this paper traces the dual history of indigenous education policies as both a strategy for "civilizing" indigenous populations and a nation-state tool for modernization. It connects these efforts with processes of racialisation, colonialisation, and patriarchisation, arguing that the suppression of indigenous knowledge constituted a foundational core to global knowledge hierarchies that shape sociological knowledge production.

Secondly, it explores how the Universidad Autónoma Comunal de Oaxaca and Universidad Campesina Indígena en Red in Mexico navigate silenced histories, disrupt hegemonic academic practices and centre Indigenous knowledge systems. They offer a critique of the predominant academic model through their horizontal organizational structures, communal learning, and research grounded in local fights for indigenous rights, territory and the recognition of ancestral and oral knowledge.

Thirdly, drawing on pluritopic hermeneutics, it advocates for understanding the rise of Indigenous Universities as insurrection of subjugated knowledge. By centring marginalized voices, they engage in epistemic decolonization, highlighting the necessity of epistemic humility in sociological knowledge production and emphasise that recognising the practices of anticolonial movements as theories in their own right is crucial to engage with historically silenced and invisible forms of knowledge.

Finally, this paper maintains that Indigenous Universities and their decolonial practices serve as a model for rethinking the foundations of sociological inquiry. Engaging with these institutions decolonizes the discipline and contributes to reimagining sociological terminologies, academic hierarchies, and societal transformation, answering Trouillot’s call to "unsilence" the past.