Indigenous Women Academics: Insurgent Voices and Resistant Bodies in Brazilian Universities

That work investigates how the trajectories of indigenous women develop and intertwine with one another in Brazilian universities. It takes a decolonial and intersectional perspective for the analytical comprehension of the coloniality of being, knowledge and power with the intention of treating the enrollment, permanence and presence of the body-territory in Brazilian universities, especially in pos-graduation and teaching, when they are immersed in the world of research and scientific production. The meanings of territorial demarcation are considered from two dimensions of their experiences: The insurgence expressed in their words and attitudes which become more elevated on a daily basis and mark their own trajectories during their courses and academic lives, and the resistance embodied in the collective affirmation of identity, of ethnic ancestral knowledge and in the commitment with their original communities. Once in Higher Education, as body-territories, indigenous women are challenged to stay in institutions which do not think from or with the indigenous people. In turn, it has been observed that the production of knowledge of indigenous authorship presents itself deeply rooted in their cultures, collaborating with the preservation and updating of their cosmovisions and community values through movements of ethnic self-affirmation as well as the struggle for their own land. It is discussed that the attempts to delete the knowledge and the extinction of the indigenous people was, and has been, a story lived directly by indigenous woman. The violence against them must be understood in the context of the historic processes that fell on their bodies, but while they are getting organized in movements of resistance and re-existence, the impositions of power are faced and become gradually weakened. After all, they not only resist to modern colonial oppression, but they also reexist, that is, they reinvent themselves as academics,contributing to the gestation of a new society.