Discursive and social practices of the indigenous presence at the University of Brasília: building paths for the permanence and exchange of knowledge under the focus of critical Discourse Analysis
Indigenous students, university, discourse analysis, decoloniality, education;
In this research I investigate the social and discursive processes of the presence of indigenous students at the University of Brasília-UnB with a focus on the critical view of language studies. I depart from theoretical and methodological assumptions of Critical Discourse Analysis, in dialogue with critical social science studies on decoloniality, associated with critical thinking on education as a practice of liberation. The thematic focus was on the discrepancy between the access policy for indigenous students to UnB (since 2004) and the effective policy of daily reception, with its gaps, aimed at the permanence of these students at the university. This doctoral research continues the research work started in the 2016 Master's, about our presence in this Institution, with the greater purpose of building, in a dialogic way, based on the exchange of knowledge, a policy of permanence and inclusion, in fact , based on respect for Brazilian indigenous diversity, registering identity marks added to the process of ethnic belonging, village x university and vice versa. To compose a relevant topic on the research agenda in Critical Discourse Analysis, I choose as a possible social and discursive problem, the difficulties experienced by indigenous students at the University. These difficulties may be related to the invisibility of this indigenous presence in undergraduate and graduate courses, in addition to the various forms of discrimination experienced in academic spaces, as observed in my master's research (Silva, 2017, 2021). In the path of improving knowledge and ways of transforming social practices, I experience a narrative-ethnographic and autoethnographic research (Etherington, 2004; Nicholas, 2018; Thomas, 1993), including identity and agency issues within the scope of discourse (Fairclough, 2003; Santos, 2010; Hall, 2005; Krenak, 2020; Kopenawa, 2015; Silva, 2017); I embrace reflexive and decolonial postures, with the purpose of having the foundation in the construction of dialogue, interaction, exchange of knowledge and resistance for the existence of the differentiated being (Dursel, 1994; Carvalho, 2001; Mignolo, 2006; Maldonato Torres, 2007; Santos, 2010, Walsh, 2015; Acosta, 2016; Gosfoguel, 2016). As a result, I highlight movements of discursive and social transformation, in the reflexive and action practices of several university subjects: indigenous students, non-indigenous students, teachers and administrators. By investigating identity conflicts related to the sphere of power, differences and exclusions, I was able to understand how these tensions and crises are constructed in the discursive path and how they can be overcome; I analyzed the implications and relations of the discourses with social practices and, mainly, I think I could contribute to this debate in terms of changing this social reality. I evidenced, in this qualitative research based on (auto)ethnographic criticism and documentation, that the interaction that takes place in the construction process of exchanging knowledge, ways of being and new forms of power that is experienced along the way.