Indigenous perceptions Paiter Suruí about higher education: searching for meaning from narratives of graduation students

Abstract

This article is based on part of the results of research carried out in the Postgraduate Program in Education at the State University of Mato Grosso (Unemat), campus of Cáceres, MT. We highlight as main interlocutors the students belonging to the indigenous people of the Paiter Suruí ethnic group, enrolled in undergraduate courses in the city of Cacoal, RO, closest to the Sete de Setembro Indigenous Land with a higher education offer. Due to the need for delimitation, we focus the present study on the approach of students’ perspectives on higher education. The instruments used for data collection were: documentary and field research, through semi-structured interviews. Among the results obtained, it was found that all Paiter Suruí indigenous students who collaborated with the research expressed the perspective of using the knowledge acquired at the university for the benefit of the indigenous community, envisioning the possibility of helping their families and their people, to keep their cultural origins alive, even if they have to claim their space and continue to fight for their rights before non-indigenous society.