Between territories and knowledge practices. Challenges with indigenous teacher training in Brazil

In Brazil, indigenous claims for the right to maintain their specific ways of living and thinking, maintaining and using their own languages, cultures, and modes of production, and the re-elaboration and transmission of knowledge have resulted in the development of intercultural teacher training programs in Brazilian universities. The discussions presented here take as a reference the experiences of the authors in the Intercultural Training Course for Indigenous Educators (FIEI) developed and offered at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) since 2006. We highlight significant aspects of the training of indigenous teachers in the constant flow between villages and university in progressive processes of deterritorialization and reciprocal recognition. We present the approach to the notion of territory that supports our analysis and describe three curricular components of the course from the perspective of different territorialities: the teaching internship, the intermodules in a specific qualification, and the research monographs resulting from “academic paths.” We conclude that the FIEI experience is not only a training process for indigenous students, but it also engenders the transformation of everyone involved.