Education, Political Ontology and Indigenous Issues in Schools

Abstract

This article articulates political ontology —notably the proposition of multinaturalism, stemming from the ontological turn in Anthropology— with the field of education, in order to rethink the place of Indigenous peoples in schools. We begin from the understanding of schools as spaces of coexistence and tension between distinct worlds and ways of life. Based on this foundation, we analyze three sensitive points in approaches to Indigenous issues in the school context: the notion of authenticity, the relationship with the nation-state, and belonging to the land. The analysis demonstrates that Indigenous territorial struggles, in their cosmopolitical dimension, together with the framework of multinaturalism, offer powerful tools for the construction of anti-colonial educational practices. Such practices not only challenge the human exceptionalism of Western ontologies, but also expand the political-pedagogical imaginary, positioning themselves as essential contributions to confronting ecological collapse.