Ações Afirmativas para Indígenas Estudantes na Universidade Federal do Pará, Região Norte, Amazônia, Brasil

Abstract

Affirmative action policies in the context of Brazilian higher education are fundamental to promoting access for black and Indigenous people, quilombolas, transgender and foreign people to public universities, as well as providing pathways for new dreams to enter undergraduate and graduate programs. The massive access of Indigenous populations to higher education occurred primarily from the 2000s onwards, with the implementation of quotas in public institutions, a characteristic stemming from the organized struggle of Brazilian Indigenous movements to guarantee rights. At the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), regarding undergraduate studies, this access occurs through the Special Selection Process (PSE), a differentiated admission method approved in 2009 by the university council (the first offering was in 2010), which guarantees two places for Indigenous people in all undergraduate courses – however, the presence of these peoples at UFPA began in 2006 in the Postgraduate Program in Law. In this way, this study sought to contribute to the topic of affirmative action for indigenous peoples at UFPA (Federal University of Pará), focusing on the following: (a) analyzing the state of the art regarding affirmative action for indigenous peoples at UFPA and in the Legal Amazon; (b) discussing the relationship between identity and the homogenization of differences among indigenous peoples; (c) evaluating institutional data on these students; (d) questioning how indigenous people access graduate programs at UFPA. As a research strategy, I conducted conversations with four UFPA students – three undergraduates and one graduate student. To achieve these objectives, a bibliographic survey was necessary to determine what has already been produced on the topic in the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD), using the following descriptors: "indigenous people," "higher education," "affirmative action," "affirmative action policies," and "quotas," focusing on institutions in the Legal Amazon. Furthermore, the consolidated literature on indigenous education and affirmative action in the university context was essential for theoretical and methodological grounding. The research indicates some important paths to characterize affirmative action in the context of UFPA (Federal University of Pará): advances have extended beyond undergraduate studies, with policies for access to the university's postgraduate programs, but not all programs comply with the legal requirement to offer places for quota students, as stipulated by Law No. 14.723/2023; the amount of research on this public policy at the dissertation and thesis levels in UFPA's postgraduate programs is insufficient; in the context of the Legal Amazon, there is little research on affirmative action for indigenous peoples in postgraduate studies, which negatively impacts improvements – a reflection of the northern region being the last in the country to implement quotas; the appreciation of the differences between the various indigenous groups studying at UFPA is not encouraged, but rather a homogenization around a single identity.