Studying Indigenous people or studying with Indigenous people?

Considerations on a less colonial scientific practice

Abstract

This article initiates by mapping the diverse critiques that Eurocentric epistemology has faced since the second half of the 20th century, as well as the theories that have developed from these critiques, to reflect on the responses given by Latin American voices to colonial violence. These voices deconstruct the principles of progress and the end of history, as well as important divisions in the canon of Western thought: nature/culture, reason/sensibility, civilization/barbarism, subject/object. From there, dialogue with Indigenous intellectuals (Ailton Krenak, Davi Kopenawa) and those of Indigenous descent (Gloria Anzaldúa, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui) allows us to consider a “dialectic without synthesis” and the search for forms of diplomacy that do not contribute to a “perpetual peace” but to “provisional peaces,” articulating humans and nonhumans. The reflection moves toward proposing four paths from which we can envision a less colonial scientific practice.