The decolonial perspective of ethnomathematics as a resistance movement

Abstract

This article is based on the following core ideas: (a) historically, productions in ethnomathematics present research results on knowledge that can be understood as mathematics. (b) one of the powers of ethnomathematics is to break with the common idea of ​​unique, idealized mathematics, distant from the history of humanity, elitist, Eurocentric. Ethnomathematics approaches a decolonial proposal by recognizing and valuing the many knowledges present in social practices. (c) the historical process of colonization implied territorial conquests and the destruction of the cultural roots of colonized peoples. This is a way to eliminate the history of these peoples. (d) The growing participation of researchers from social movements can help to avoid such contradictions. Based on these perspectives, in the first part of this article we emphasize that ethnomathematics, in its political dimension, can help in reflections on decolonization processes, as well as in the recognition of the cultural roots of individuals. In the second part, we present brief metatexts of the articles that make up the dossier “Ethnomathematics: decolonial perspective and resistance movements”, as a way of introducing the reader to recent contributions by Brazilian and foreign researchers, and stimulating debate on the subject.