University students denounce racism and humiliation of professor against indigenous student in Rondônia

Iury Lima – Cenarium Magazine

VILHENA (RO) – The Central Students Directory of the Federal University of Rondônia (DCE/Unir) denounced, on Tuesday, 23, prejudiced and humiliating comments made by a professor of the Language course of the Federal University of Rondônia (Unir), to an indigenous student of the Guarasugwe ethnic group.

The reason for the verbal aggressions was a low grade detected during the correction of tests in the classroom. Besides exposing the student’s grade to everyone in the class, the professor referred to him as an example of what “not to do”.

Read also: Racism, xenophobia and violence: Guarasugwe people denounce attack and threats in Rondônia

According to reports, the teacher also asked about how the student would kill a person. If he would use a knife or a club, making references to the indigenous origins of the boy. For the directory, his posture reinforced stereotypes that classify indigenous people as savages, primitive and aggressive.

Hypocrisy and repudiation

In a note of repudiation, the DCE also exposed that the professor signed an article about the ethnicity of the student humiliated by him, but that, according to the Guarasugwe leaders themselves, he did not even set foot in the community.

“It is customary for many researchers/scientists to take advantage of indigenous peoples to write thousands of scientific articles, publish books, and academic papers, to fatten their lattes, enjoying the agendas of the original peoples, but without giving any return, support or solidarity to these peoples,” published the academic directory of Unir.

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“The DCE of Unir vehemently repudiates any kind of harassment, discrimination and/or prejudice inside and outside our educational institution (…) The academic community of Unir sympathizes with the pain of the harassed indigenous student and reinforces that the DCE (maximum entity of student representation at Unir) is open to receive any complaint from students harassed in academic space,” concluded the DCE.

No position

Indigenous organizations in the region claim that the student dropped out of the professor’s course who was the author of the attacks and that, in addition, he plans to quit the undergraduate course. The student’s identity was not revealed out of respect for him and the Guarasugwe people. The professor’s name has also not been released.

CENARIUM MAGAZINE asked the Federal University of Rondônia about the episode, as well as what measures the institution should take against the professor named in the complaint, but there was no answer in any of Unir’s communication channels until the publication of this report.