Community-led education in Indigenous nations is like a seed—it needs the right ecosystem to grow. It has to be cultivated in the fertile ground of ancestral communities in order to strengthen those communities’ identities, language and cultural practices for new generations.
Now more than ever, Indigenous Peoples are committed to cultivating that seed so that it grows strong through collaboration and through the exchange of practices between nations and peoples. This cultivation will strengthen education, so that it is not limited to the Western, hegemonic methods enforced by a colonial education system, which is far from Indigenous Peoples’ cultural reality. Instead, community-led education originates in and develops through living narratives from Indigenous Peoples’ own territories. It is an exercise of self-determination in line with their needs and their reality.
Community-led education is not limited to what happens within the walls of a school; it’s profoundly connected to the reality of the territory where it takes place. This is an act of resistance, of cultural affirmation, of respect for ancestral roots and of demand for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and nations. There is a constant struggle for these communities to have their own curriculum that not only strengthens the knowledge of new generations, but also strengthens their collective identity.
In Ecuador and Colombia, communities continue to fight for an education model that respects their customs and processes. In Ecuador, for example, even though the importance of intercultural bilingual education has been recognized, there is still a lot of work to do to guarantee that Indigenous Peoples and nations can design and apply their own curriculums, in order to teach and preserve their languages, culture and cosmovision.
Photos: Marina Sardiña
