LANGUAGE CONFLICT IN INTERCULTURAL INDIGENOUS TEACHER TRAINING COLLEGES

ABSTRACT Indigenous peoples’ presence in Brazilian universities has been increasing in the last years. While Indigenous cultures, languages and knowledge have been contributing to academic enrichment, such presence has also posed several challenges to these institutions. One of them has to do with the multitude of Indigenous languages in these environments. In order to contribute to this issue, this paper aims at discussing how language policies can be built in order to promote indigenous languages in a specific university intercultural teacher education program. It is argued that the development of new theories, epistemologies and methodologies in cooperation with indigenous people is needed in order to improve language policies in the academy.