Weaving Pathways Towards Decoloniality Through Indigenous Community-Based Research and Cosmopraxes

Indigenous psychologies teach about decolonial ontologies, epistemologies, axiologies, methodologies, and praxes. Western scientific knowledge erased Indigenous knowledge from the hegemonic archive through the colonization and imperialistic exploitation of peoples and lands. It has caused devastating impacts such as epistemicide, ecocide, and genocide. Yet Indigenous communities are still thriving, resisting, surviving, contesting colonial impositions, remembering, and co-creating impressive knowledge and praxes that address perspectives in diverse geopolitical settings for epistemic and ecological justice. This movement promotes a new era of decoloniality; delinking from anthropocentrism, stopping the erasure of contributions from the Global South, and centering the sacredness of nature, spirituality, and accountability. Decoloniality requires learning from Indigenous epistemologies, methodologies, and values, co-constructing practice-based theories informed by their cosmovisions, cosmopraxes (cosmoprácticas), and co-authoring collective stories that weave relations with people and nature. This paper reviews examples of Indigenous community-based research in diverse ecologies and in Zapotec, Mazatec, and Maya Lacandon communities from Mexico.