Paths of Reforestation of Thinking: Interculturality from Indigenous Philosophies

Abstract

This text aims to affirm Indigenous philosophies as wisdom that contributes significantly to the way of thinking/feeling education and philosophy. From the Western tradition, philosophy has been constituted from the rupture of what we call mythical thought. Indigenous philosophies, however, start from the mythical narrative, symbolic thought, dreams, orality, and all the ancestry they carry to constitute their cosmologies. To affirm Indigenous thought is, therefore, to recover what was denied, showing that philosophy does not have a single soil of origin (Greece), but is built in different territories and historical times. The negation of indigenous philosophies translates, in many moments, to the very ontological negation of those who have produced and continue to produce thought. Therefore, Indigenous philosophies are forms of reforestation of monocultural rationality and can compose other political-pedagogical exercises, in which good living is a central element. The objective is to show that Indigenous philosophies carry ways of life that contribute to rethinking the “civilizing” processes that have led humanity and the planet to the destruction of the diversity of thought and, with this, teach us to live interculturality as a necessary learning for the survival of knowledge and peoples.

Keywords

• indigenous philosophies
• philosophy
• interculturality
• education
• cosmology
• methodologies