Contributions to the pluriverse from indigenous women professors of intercultural universities

Abstract

In this article, we share first-hand narratives by two indigenous women professors to show how they contribute to the interconnection of several worlds from and within intercultural universities in Mexico. Their accounts demonstrate how their professional, political, and community trajectories are crucial in the construction and promotion of indigenous knowledges and worldviews, and in building connections between academic theorizations and local practices. Indigenous women’s academic contributions support epistemological diversity as foundational to advancing studies of the pluriverse and provide elements for the decolonization of thought. The exercise of writing and thinking about the pluriverse from four different experiences–a Ch'ol, a Nahua, and a Mestiza-, with commentaries by a male Ecuadorian Mestizo scholar–have created a pluriversal space, which is also an exercise of decolonizing academia, bridging alliances, and fostering intercultural dialogue. This effort seeks to counteract the underrepresentation of indigenous women as producers of knowledge in international academic spaces.