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Staff and students at a project workshop

Students receiving training at UNIA

The six scholarship winners

A key element of the ‘Indigenous visions for rights-based approaches to sustainability’ project, funded by the University of Sussex’s International Development Challenge Fund (IDCF) and the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP), has been the training of indigenous university students towards the preparation of their proposals for fully funded thesis scholarships at the Intercultural Amazon University (UNIA - Universidad Nacional Intercultural de la Amazonía).

Despite making up 40% of the student body at UNIA, indigenous students – and particularly female indigenous students – are grossly underrepresented in graduate statistics. Indigenous students are affected by institutionalized discrimination, an aspect of the education system rarely openly documented and dealt with, as well as systemic socio-political injustice and violence. This includes the lack of recognition of their cultural, linguistic and geographical realities, the impossibility to use their language in formal contexts, inadequate laws to address environmental rights issues and human rights abuses such as land grab and logging, racism and discrimination, marginalization and exclusion as well as reduced or no access to essential services such as healthcare, sanitation and education.

Committed in fighting against the unequal representation in the education system and human rights violations, one of the project team’s aims is to focus on long-term capacity building and help to ensure that local indigenous priorities are heard and acted upon. In collaboration with the UNIA, the team therefore allocated some of its project funding towards the launch of a special scholarship programme for indigenous students covering financial, administrative and academic support to undertake research projects. This will eventually help to create a network of researchers to map human rights violations of indigenous peoples and communities as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and development activities – such as logging and mining – in their Amazon rainforest territories.

Dr Aoife Bennett, the project lead in Peru, recounts: “It was not an easy road for anyone involved. Aside from Covid-19, there were many administrative bumps along the way that blocked, suspended, complicated or derailed our beautiful plans. Nevertheless, after a few delays we launched the application and interview process. This was an exciting and humbling, and somewhat emotional process for us. Many candidates turned up in their native dress, and it was a magical experience to listen to their interests and think about how it would work into the future. Initially we got very few female applicants, so we sent out a special announcement to encourage female candidates to apply, offering to provide for childcare and other incentives – also covered by the Sussex funds.”  

As part of this programme the selected students received intensive academic and technical training in proposal design, methodology, literature review, drone and GPS mapping and in other key field tools in addition to supervision and administrative support. Between Dr Aoife Bennett and Rodrigo Lazo from UNIA, the students received over 120 hours of intensive teaching and training over the course of five weeks on for instance how to do literature reviews, develop their ideas with confidence, apply research methods, etc. Sussex staff and SSRP research fellows Dr Evan Killick (School of Global Studies) and Dr Mary Menton (School of Global Studies) also supported this process virtually, by holding seminars and 1:1 meetings helping students individually to tackle specific academic difficulties. The programme also involved teaching and talks from well-known and respected Indigenous elders, and indigenous people working in environmental or humanitarian arenas, so that the intercultural approach remained intact.

Despite administrative and logistical difficulties due to the pandemic, six indigenous students have recently been announced as scholarship winners and have received full scholarship funding to undertake their research work. Reflecting on this experience, Dr Bennett noted that “whilst many in the developed world profess to help local people in the places in which they research, especially indigenous people, to achieve their goals, most do so by quick and easy means. This is understandable, a workshop is a lot easier to budget, organize and control than 8 months of blood, sweat and tears. However, the results, the lives changed, the panorama of a better future cannot be done quickly or cheaply or easily. Congratulations to the team at Sussex, UNIA and to the six warrior scholarship winners for getting this far. Here's watching this space…!”

 Scholarship winners and thesis titles:

1. Beker Horiel López Rengifo – The sustainability of industrial legal logging in the Native Community of Flor de Ucayali, Callería District, Ucayali.
2. Betsy Clarible Mozombite –The barriers and opportunities that women from the Shipibo-Konibo Community face  to be indigenous leaders.
3. Weny Timoteo Muñoz Sanchez – Improvement of the technological and nutritional production processes of the ancestral drink masato
4. Kasen Shawit Yampik Fabian – Environmental rights in oil spill contexts: The case of the Native Community of Nazareth in 2021
5. Wendy Sharlay Flores Cauper – Infant upbringing guidelines for Shipiba mothers: A comparative study in urban and rural families
6. Rany Sanchium Tawam – The propagation of Matelea vines in the Native Community of Wachapea Chiriaco
   
   

Further information about the project on ‘Indigenous visions for rights-based approached to sustainability’, jointly funded by University of Sussex’s International Development Challenge Fund (IDCF) and the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP), can be found on the SSRP website.

Access to extensive academic resources was also provided by Oxford University for Dr Bennett, her colleagues and the students.

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