The word and the land

"A Palavra e a Terra" (The Word and the Land) was our first seminar on Indigenous experiences in higher education, held in May 2025 in Porto Nacional, Tocantins, in collaboration with Professor Marcelo Santos Rodrigues (UFT). The event served as an inaugural forum for connecting teaching, research, and outreach, bringing together Indigenous students, faculty, and leaders to reflect on the relationships between territoriality, orality, and academic practices. Based on this experience, we expanded collaborative networks and consolidated lines of research that integrate culture, memory, cosmologies, and retention policies in higher education, with an emphasis on valuing Indigenous knowledge and strengthening outreach initiatives within the "History, Memory, and Latin American Narratives" research group we coordinate. We visited the Xerente Indigenous Territory, together with IPHAN technicians, to recognize and document for the first time a set of cave paintings in burrows in the Maracujá village.