FIELD EXPERIENCES AND DECOLONIAL LEARNING IN THE BALATIPONE-UMUTINA TERRITORY: EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY FROM AN INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This article analyzes the formative experiences of indigenous people in the Balatiponé-Umutina Indigenous Territory, in Barra do Bugres, Mato Grosso do Sul. The activity, part of the Graduate Program in Geography and the Mais Ciência na Escola Project, aimed to promote dialogue between scientific and traditional knowledge, reaffirming Indigenous education as a practice of resistance, autonomy, and identity reconstruction. The research, qualitative in nature and ethnographic in nature, was based on authors such as Candau (2014), Walsh (2009), Haesbaert (2004), Santos (2006), Fleuri (2003), and Almeida (2010), as well as contemporary Indigenous voices such as Krenak (2019) and Baniwa (2021). Observations and interactions with teachers, students, and community leaders at the Julá Paré School highlighted that the territory is an educational space of multiple languages, where science, spirituality, and ancestry intertwine. The results indicate that field experience constitutes an exercise in listening, coexistence and intercultural recognition, strengthening decolonial learning and the protagonism of indigenous peoples in the production of plural knowledge.