At the end of 2023, an outreach project proposal was developed by faculty members and researchers from UFG’s Nursing program to conduct discussion circles on health and well-being with Indigenous students and health service professionals in the state of Goiás. Through a collaborative process, the initiative aims to train participants to engage in public events and develop academic outreach projects in dialogue with their home communities.

Since 2008, UFG has had an inclusion program that allocates one spot in each in-person undergraduate program at UFG (Catalão, Goiânia, Goiás, and Jataí campuses) for Indigenous applicants, provided there are candidates registered. Additionally, UFG has created a similar spot for quilombola candidates in each in-person undergraduate program where such applicants are registered. Students in the UFG Inclui Program receive support from the Secretaria de Inclusão (SIN/UFG). Furthermore, through the Pró-Reitoria de Assuntos Estudantis (PRAE), the university offers financial assistance for student retention in the form of scholarships for housing and food. These efforts aim to address the historical exclusion and discrimination faced by Indigenous and quilombola students in academic settings while acknowledging the ongoing challenges they face in higher education. One approach to tackling these challenges involves fostering initiatives that encourage dialogue and student leadership, enabling the university to adapt its teaching and learning methods to better align with the students’ educational and cultural needs.

The partnership with the USP Indigenous Network began when Professor Danilo Silva Guimarães from the Institute of Psychology was invited to co-supervise the professional master’s research of Milena Nunes de Almeida. Her study focused on care and suicide prevention actions, exploring public policies from an intercultural and dialogical perspective. Through her research, Milena encountered various challenges and potential solutions as identified by the Indigenous mental health care network participants she interviewed.

The research findings highlighted several challenges, including professional training limited to the biomedical model, which insufficiently considers the ethnic, racial, and cultural specificities embedded in Indigenous care practices. Reported difficulties included a lack of training for working with Indigenous communities, the need for understanding Indigenous languages, customs, values, and worldviews, as well as inadequate working conditions and scarce resources. As potential solutions to address these complex realities in Indigenous mental health care, interviewees emphasized the need for greater investment by federal entities in mental health initiatives, the restructuring of work processes to ensure closer community engagement for suicide prevention, the formation of multidisciplinary mental health care teams, respect for the role of pajés, and the incorporation of traditional healing knowledge within the community.

Part of the results of the research were discussed in the article de Almeida, M. N., Caixeta, C. C., Santos Silva, N. D., de Morais, N. M., Dos Santos, P. D., Gonçalves, L. P., Achatz, R. W., Silva Guimarães, D., & Chaudhary, N. (2024). Challenges and Concerns in Assisting Indigenous People with Suicide Attempts. Integrative psychological & behavioral science, 58(1), 319–337. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-023-09803-x. 

The current proposal gained relevance from the USP Indigenous Network initiative to study conceptions, practices, and settings related to health and well-being, emerging from cultural and outreach activities that began in 2012 at the University of São Paulo (FAPESP process number 2022/04906-3). We assembled an international, interdisciplinary, and interethnic team to discuss the meanings of the dialogue processes between academic and Indigenous communities within the Rede. One of the key expansions being focused on is the partnership with UFG in cultural and outreach actions. As these actions become public, they can be referenced in studies, ensuring Indigenous authorship of their knowledge. In other words, within outreach activities, our proposal is for Indigenous individuals to be recognized as knowledge holders and proposers of relevant practices and reflections in dialogue with the team.

Researchers from various universities in Brazil, including USP and UFG, are participating in this project, along with affiliated researchers from multiple international academic contexts: Colombia (University of Valle), Denmark (Aalborg University), Germany (Sigmund Freud University), India (University of Delhi), Italy (University of Salerno), New Zealand (Massey University, University of Auckland, and University of Waikato), Norway (University of Oslo), South Africa (Global Brain Health Institute), among others.

Specifically regarding University Outreach actions, Ana Kuiau Suya Trumai, a veterinary medicine student at UFG, along with the Gerência de Saúde Mental da Secretaria de Saúde do Estado de Goiás (SES-Go), the UFG

 Nursing Faculty, and the Secretaria de Inclusão (SIN-UFG), will be involved in activities aimed at supporting Indigenous university students. These initiatives seek to foster an understanding of the practical health and well-being conceptions among Indigenous students. Proposed activities include discussion circles on health and well-being, events on important academic dates to present the project, workshops with Indigenous students on health-related topics, cultural exchange activities, and storytelling sessions.

Written by Ana Kuiau Suya Trumai, Milena Nunes de Almeida, Camila Cardoso Caixeta, Nathalia Dos Santos Silva e Danilo Silva Guimarães.