The UNESCO Chair on Sustainability at the UPC met on 8/30/2023 with representatives and technicians from the Autonomous Indigenous Intercultural Univ. (UAIIN), with the purpose of strengthening indigenous territories through socio-economic and environmental transformation projects.
The UAIIN of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca - CRIC, is an educational institution of a special community nature, designed and created by and for the communities within the framework of the Indigenous Educational System (SEIP). Its actions and purposes are framed in the exercise of self-government, in the educational experience of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) through the Intercultural Bilingual Education Program and the different CRIC programs, which in agreement with the communities and their authorities has been carrying out training processes practically since February 24, 1971.
The UAIIN has been ratified through several mandates and resolutions produced by the indigenous Authorities in the Congresses and Boards of Directors, from 1971 to 2018, its operation has been structured based on the political-organizational, pedagogical and administrative components in correspondence with the policy of own education within the framework of the SEIP, in accordance with the mandates of the Indigenous Authorities. In 2018, its creation was once again confirmed by the one hundred and twenty-six Traditional Authorities of the indigenous reservations and councils that make up the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca – CRIC.
The conception of education as a result of political and collective action has led to the reflection and identification of community education, which assumes education as a comprehensive, progressive and permanent process throughout the life cycle, in which the family intervenes, the spiritual authority, the community, the cultural and political authorities, and that reflects the organizational capacities, where it is manifested that the responsibility is not exclusive of the teacher and the school, but of the entire community.
Reflection on the mobility of thought for the construction of feeling-knowing-thinking-doing requires thinking that educational spaces must correspond to social dynamics, to the mobility of memory to circulate collective thought and strengthen the community process, for which students must train. Do not mold children into passivity, but rather enhance their creativity and spirit of freedom.
The confluence of diverse peoples in the dynamics from CRIC is also a reality that questions the emergence of knowledge from a presumed and only source according to the Eurocentric canon; On the other hand, we affirm that there is a diversity of wisdom and knowledge in the different Continents, sources of cultures and spaces where life situations and human problems to be resolved are recreated, constructed and understood.
These dynamics make the indigenous university take shape as its own institution, with an intercultural vision, in its responsibility to make visible discourses and practices that have historically been excluded, degrading the condition of many human groups.
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The objective of the collaboration of the UNESCO Chair of Sustainability of the UPC with the UAIIN-CRIC is to jointly prepare a transformation project that can address the socio-economic and environmental challenges in the indigenous territories of Cauca, in Colombia.
