Popular extension in the current of the rights of the indigenous people Gamela in the “last agricultural frontier”, in the State of Piauí, Brazil

Abstract

In Brazil, the indigenous peoples and the traditional communities face the dismantle of the land demarcation policies, context accelerated by Bolsonaro’s Administration. The popular extension, grounded on Paulo Freire’s legacy, has been strengthening the self-organization of the traditional communities in the fight for territory. This study seeks to answer the questioning: how the popular extension contributes for the strengthening of the self-organization of the indigenous people Gamela, in the community Laranjeiras, in Piauí, as to ethnicity’s land demand with the State? Research’s locus is the Popular University Project in the traditional community Laranjeiras, do Piauí. The popular extension is carried out through teaching and research, from the articulation between academic and popular knowledges, starred by the Gamela indigenous people, in Piauí. The popular extension, aligned with Gadotti (2017), articulates the subjects by the “popular action”, and, as defended by Freire (1985), the place of the practice is a possibility of change and construction of a new knowledge. The qualitative approach, the participative investigation-action, based on Fals-Borda (1981), and the dialectic analysis, qualify the methodology of decolonization of the knowledge in the fight for the right to territory. The popular extension contributes for the self-organization of the Gamela ethnicity in the fight for territory demarcation in the relationship with the State and has been potentiating the sustainable agricultural extractivism of the buriti and the protection of fountainheads and communities’ water resources.