Indigenous support network: conceptions, practices and environments for health and well-being

Abstract

The aim of this project is to deepen the understanding of the concepts, practices and environments of health and well-being, that emerge in the process of actions of the Indigenous Support Network (ISN, Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, Brazil), which has been articulating dialogues between indigenous communities and academic communities since 2012. Concepts of health and well-being will be mapped through a dialogical analysis of ISN public documents from over 10 years. This analysis will result in a co-authored protocol for the development of further projects in the context of the ISN. During the development of new ISN projects, each step will produce (1) a public report by the ISN in collaboration with communities that makes explicit the goals, procedures, and outcomes of the activities; (2) the academic partners of the ISN will produce institutional reports on their participation in the activities; (3) indigenous experts will be invited to participate in public events at the university and to collaborate in co-authored academic productions. These three categories of products, together with other public documents produced in the context of academic extension, will be analyzed as utterances, considering the referents of semantic content and expressive aspects that reflect the position of the ISN participants in the field-theme of health and well-being. The dialogical approach to communication takes into account the multiplicity of subjective perceptions and interpretations when people communicate. Dialogical tensions in the boundaries of multiple dialogical positions are expected, and the creative ways proposed to circumvent barriers and to construct frontiers for the viable and desirable collaboration between the indigenous people and the academics. The analysis and discussion of the results should contribute to the broadening and deepening of partnerships between indigenous communities and the university, in projects focused on health and well-being. (AU)