Despite the difficulties still faced today in entering and remaining in higher education, a survey on the Quero Bolsa website shows that, while The total number of new entrants to Brazilian higher education has increased by 48% since 2010, the entry of indigenous students into Brazilian colleges has taken a huge leap bigger.
In 2010, 2,723 freshman students who declared themselves indigenous enrolled in colleges. In 2017, the most recent data available, there were 25,670, a number 9.4 times higher.
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“What we conclude is that this increase is very much linked to the quota policy. We need to offer education for these young people and the conditions to enter higher education”, analyzes the institutional relations manager of Quero Bolsa, Rui Gonçalves.
According to the Quota Law (Law 12.711/12), 50% of vacancies at federal universities and federal high-level technical education institutions must be reserved for students from public schools. Within the law, vacancies are reserved for blacks, browns and indigenous people, according to the percentage of these populations in the federative units.
Another public policy highlighted by Gonçalves is the Bolsa Permanência Program, which grants financial assistance to students in situations of economic vulnerability. The scholarship for indigenous people is R$900.
Today, the percentage of indigenous students in relation to other students (0.68%) is greater than the total percentage of indigenous people in in relation to the country's population (0.43%), according to the last Census, in 2010, by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
For the coordinator of Kanindé – Associação de Defesa Etnoambiental, Neide Bandeira, the presence of indigenous people in higher education brings important contributions to society.
“It is a huge gain for non-indigenous society as well. They bring the cultural load, they share cultural knowledge. They begin to interact more with other societies and help to reduce prejudice”, she says. In addition, they contribute to the scientific development of the country, as “they start to develop their own research, with an indigenous perspective”, adds Neide.
Seringueira, Neide fought to have access to his own education. She left the village where she lived at the age of 12 and went to Porto Velho to study. The family's efforts paid off, and today she is working to complete her doctorate in geography at the Federal University of Rondônia. “When I came to the city of Porto Velho, I was determined to change the story told, in which the Indians always got along badly. She wanted them to be winners. I studied to show history from the side of those who were portrayed as defeated.”
April 19th is known as Indian Day. The date was established on June 2, 1943 by the then President of the Republic, Getúlio Vargas. Decree-Law number 5,540, which created the celebration, was based on the First Inter-American Indian Congress, held in Mexico in 1940. The measure is registered in the Federal Official Gazette at the time.