Dialogue Circles at UFG in Partnership with the Indigenous Network: May 2025

The fourth and fifth dialogue circles of the Indigenous Network’s partnership project with UFG, “Creating Spaces for Dialogue on Indigenous Health and Well-Being,” took place on May 6 and 7, 2025, in the city of Goiás. The collaboration with the UFG Inclusion Office (SIN-UFG), the Faculty of Nursing/UFG, the Center for Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Studies (NEABI), and the Goiás State Health Department aims to promote environments of health and well-being—not only within the university but also by incorporating Indigenous perspectives on what ensures well-being through dialogue between Indigenous people, university professors, and healthcare professionals. As detailed in previous reports, the latest dialogue circles facilitated discussions—sharing questions and demands from both Indigenous participants and healthcare professionals—and led to practical outcomes, including planning future actions and meetings to strengthen collaborative ties for health and well-being.

In this context, the meeting on May 6 was held at Largo da Carioca, a park in the city of Goiás chosen for its open-air and natural setting, as suggested by Indigenous students during the November dialogue circles. This location allowed for a different dynamic of interaction and relationship-building with healthcare professionals in an environment that better aligned with Indigenous practices of health and well-being. This shift represents an important dimension of Indigenous healthcare that goes beyond the hegemonic notion of health—one that often separates the biological from the cultural, nature from the spiritual, the physical from the mental, and other binary oppositions. The co-laboration between healthcare professionals and Indigenous people cannot be reduced to standardized services in clinics and hospitals, for example, since well-being extends beyond so-called biological procedures, encompassing environmental and relational aspects as well. The term “co-laboration” is intentionally hyphenated, following Cadena’s (2024) usage, emphasizing the “co-” (together) and “labor” (work), meaning working together.

Thus, the opportunity to know healthcare professionals not only in their professional roles but also as beings and subjects in the world—with whom trust and bonds are built—highlights the relational dimension of well-being, challenging individualistic notions of health. Indigenous health practices, in contrast, involve subjects in relationship, dialogue, and exchange—subjects who recognize and co-labor with one another, not in a hierarchy of service provision or a fragmentation of specialized professionals, but in a network of care among complex and interconnected subjectivities. Additionally, being in contact with the land and nature establishes a more comfortable and familiar environment, one where health has ancestrally been nurtured. If Indigenous peoples have traditionally developed knowledge and care practices involving plants, for example, this does not mean Western medicine is entirely useless to them—but rather that nature also plays a role in promoting health and can contribute to greater well-being than asphalt and concrete ever could.

So, fostering relationships in a natural setting, 22 people gathered at Largo da Carioca, including Indigenous students from the Rural Education program, course professors and project coordinators—Hélio Simplicio Rodrigues Monteiro and Janaína Tude Sevá—health professionals from the city of Goiás, and technicians from the Goiás State Health Department—psychologist Milena Nunes from the Mental Health Division, and Indigenous health coordinators Rogério Borges and Suzilar. The meeting took place in the afternoon, with snacks and conversations, and vaccines were made available to Indigenous students. In an environment of safety, trust, and well-being, health was promoted both through the vaccines and the gathering itself, within a network of care that extended not only to Indigenous participants but to all involved. In this way, a collective construction of multiple health perspectives emerges, dialoguing toward a well-being that encompasses both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, humans and other-than-human beings—a well-being sustained through co-laboration.

Later on May 6, an evening meeting was held with the social assistance team from Creas to discuss the challenges of settling and sustaining Indigenous students and their families who arrive in the city of Goiás for the UFG program. Addressing another crucial dimension of health and well-being—financial security, housing, and food—the need for better university preparation to support students and hired interpreters was highlighted, particularly regarding delays in stipend payments, which lead to gaps in assistance for Indigenous people in the city and increased strain on other public services. Attention was also drawn to the necessity of considering Indigenous students not as isolated individuals but as part of families who also require support. If merely admitting Indigenous people into universities or healthcare services is insufficient—requiring instead dignified and healthy living conditions, both materially and relationally—then it also makes no sense to think of this permanence in individual terms. Well-being is not built individually but collectively, and the comfort of Indigenous students’ families is integral to their health, especially in an environment that is inevitably unfamiliar, where familial presence is vital. In this regard, an expanded meeting with various city sectors and Indigenous communities is being planned to address these issues.

The dialogue circle on May 7 took place in the morning at Colégio Santana, part of UFG’s Goiás campus. Around 30 people participated, including Indigenous students, health professionals from the Goiás Municipal Health Department, the Indigenous-focused primary health unit (UBS), CAPS (Psychosocial Care Center), Creas, and municipal management. Indigenous students clarified doubts with the health team, aligned approaches for addressing their needs, and shared positive experiences with local healthcare services, suggesting that the dialogue circles be expanded to other health services where they still feel unwelcome. Plans were then made for the next dialogue circle to be held at the health tent during the International Environmental Film Festival in the city of Goiás, which attracts Indigenous people from across Brazil. Additionally, the implementation of the Financial Incentive Policy for Healthcare Facilities Serving Indigenous People in Goiás was announced by the Coordinator of DSEI Araguaia, which includes training professionals in Indigenous care—an outcome of the November 2024 dialogue circles.

Considering the outcomes and demands emerging from these dialogue circles, open and sensitive dialogue has enabled the imagining and construction of health and well-being environments. While communication inevitably produces misunderstandings, the capacity for co-laboration is being cultivated through an exercise of exchange and attentive listening. By practicing health from the land and in relationship, cracks are opened in the asphalt of Goiás, making space for other ways of inhabiting the city with well-being. Subjects, vegetation, and collectives reconnect to reclaim the ancestrality of modern territories, which can be both urban and welcoming, professional and familial, academic and Indigenous. By expanding dialogues, the presence and permanence of Indigenous people—both in villages and cities—are reaffirmed.

Bibliographic Reference
CADENA, Marisol de la. Earth Beings: Andean Cosmopolitics. Bazar do Tempo, Rio de Janeiro, 2024.

University outreach activities carried out with support from FAPESP (Process No.: 22/04906-3) and CNPq (Process No.: 306149/2023-0).