Interdisciplinary Approaches to Social (In)Justice, Indigeneity and Sustainable Future(s) in Chile and Sweden

Chilean and Sweden’s indigenous communities share a history of dispossession, displacement, and erasure, coupled with non-recognition of rights. In fact, modernity’s achievements are inseparable from racism, hetero-patriarchy, economic exploitation, and discrimination of non-European knowledge systems. Our course explores how unjust expropriation of human environments and natural resources have consequences for sustainable development and multilingual communities (SDG: 11). Besides, it focuses on how preserving indigenous people’s culture, languages, and knowledge systems helps in raising awareness towards well-being (SDGs: 3, 14, 15). We draw on an ideological framework that indigenous cosmovision has provided for sustainability, which incorporates an ethics and behaviour code related to the protection of critical elements such as land and water.

Building on interdisciplinary feminist and decolonial thinkers, the course interrogates the intersections between state and the market and their potential effects on marginalised communities (SDG: 16). Furthermore, the historical recognition of indigenous epistemes incorporates the contributions of minoritized multilingual communities towards social justice, equitability and sustainability (SDG: 3; 16). The course addresses the marginalization of heritage languages and their speakers, through the ascendancy of dominant languages in the public domain. The course is guided by a central question: how do we improve our societies’ productive potential while ensuring equitable opportunities for all?