by James Montano Morales, Lucy Elena Tunubalá Tombé and Fabio Calambás Paja

The Ala kusreik ya - Misak University is an integral, autonomous educational process that seeks to revitalize the pishindθ waramik or “good Misak living”, promoting education based on four spirals and four axes. While the spirals of knowledge are: mθrθp (listening), aship (seeing), isup (thinking) and marθp (doing), the pillars are autonomous economy, autonomous administration, socio-political organization, and major law (derecho mayor). This educational process was born in the month of December 2010 as a response to the need of the community to reinforce the learning processes from intra-cultural foundations (or from autonomous education), as well as from the construction of a dialogue of knowledges (interculturality), and from those transcultural and global foundations that affect us as human beings.

“Autonomous economy” is the closest term to Misak’s notion of “Parөsөtө”. This is an expression based on daily practices that take care of life, promoting a balance with nature. The flow of autonomous economy walks “according to the Misak cosmovision and to the life cycle, and its purpose is to maintain and to recover food autonomy. It is an interrelationship that generates the production, reproduction, consumption, and exchange of food products both internally and externally. Added to this [autonomous economy] is the capacity demonstrated over time by the Misak people to incorporate different productive processes, as well as their resistance and struggle against impositions that seek to exploit their work and dispossess the territory” (Guambia town council 2012: 20).

“Autonomous administration” is a proposal of academic work, presented by Misak University, which contemplates the possibility of generating spaces of reflection between the different forms of administration or forms of government (analyzing their processes and procedures). The idea is to establish a dialogue between these forms and the administration and/or forms of government developed by some indigenous cabildos, focusing the attention in the Misak scenario.

Following professor Javiar Fayad Sierra, the “socio-political organization” pillar proposes to deepen and to investigate the conceptions, forms and territorial histories of the political and organizational processes of the Misak people. Two major relationships are studied in depth: ancestrality and political history. Ancestrality is worked from the deep relation of the kampawam (ancestral writing) with the relations of the practices and ancestral uses of the cosmos, nature, territory, medicines, plants, work forms, mingas. The approach needs to focus on the life cycles and encourages the ways of investigating the being, feeling, dreaming, and thinking that achieve the encounter between the practices and the dialogue with the ancestral forms. Here, the political history is focused on how, from the most ancient times, Misak politics is organized and achieved to remain at the national and local levels. This pillar recognizes the importance of the reconstruction and recovery of the Misak way of life, the practices of leadership and the social construction of the Misak people. In this pillar, the relationship with the territory and the memories of the Hurmera (the elders of the territory) are problematized (Fayad, 2022).

In 2015, during the First encounter of Ancestral authorities of Major Law'' that took place at the Misak University, “major law” was defined as “a law that is directly linked with the earth, with the heritage of our ancestors that inhabited some territories centuries ago. This is why it is important to describe this notion taking into account that it is, in its essence, a right to the territory” (Florez 2016: 69).

Event Namuy Yellmera (Our Seeds and Knowledges), at the Ala Kusrei Ya Misak University Picture taken by: James Montano (2019).

Mission

The mission of Ala Kusrei Ya Misak University is to offer living space to revitalize the pishindθ kusrep kømik or to live the misak education from an ethnic, special and communitarian character. Here, the law of origin is the center of the spiral. This spiral is winding and unwinding to establish a dialogue both with other ancestral knowledges and with universal knowledge, in an intracultural, intercultural and transcultural way. The research and the affirmation of cultural identity at the local, regional and international levels strengthen the processes of survival of native peoples.

Aim The aim of the Misak University is to be an indigenous space of university formation with special and communitarian character, a space that encourages the care of life in harmony with our mother-earth. To do so, we revalue our own knowledges and our own wisdoms, working with natural and alternative pedagogies that do not alter the territories neither in the medium not in the long term.

General objective To roll and unroll the formation and research processes of the Misak people at the university level, with a special and public character.

Methodology The curricular structure is centered on four axes or thematic blocks, which operate transversally, following formative interests of the territorial dynamics of the Misak people such as autonomous economy, autonomous administration, socio-political organization; and Major law.

Event Namuy Yellmera (Our Seeds and Knowledges), at the Ala Kusrei Ya Misak University Picture taken by: James Montano (2019).

The axes are related to the programs and processes established in the Misak’s life plan (1), that is, in the plan for the cultural survival and permanence of the Misak people.

(1) Regarding life plans, it has been stated that: “in 1992, the [Misak people] began to talk about life plans. Their plan established a cultural and philosophical recognition based on the cultural diversity declared by the [Colombian] constitution. Their stated objectives are: to propose elements of planification different from those proposed by the National Planning Department - DNP” (ONIC and Minagricultura 2000: 9). For the Misak world, the life plan is a communitarian reference to survive and to grow as Misak people in the spiral of time; it has existed orally. However, in 1994 the Cabildo Indígena de Guambía elaborated a first written document and began to execute its first life plan with state resources, and it does so after the recognition of the 1991 constituent assembly in Colombia.

[1] This document was elaborated based on an unpublished document of the Cabildo of Guambia: Avance de Documento Estudio de Factibilidad Comunitario Para la Formalización del Proceso Educativo Ala kusrei Ya – Misak Universidad denominado ‘aship, isup, mørøp, marøp pishindθ kusrep kømik (vivenciar la misak educación para vivir bien).

[2] This document was written by the Misak commoners of the resguardo of Guambia Taita Favio Calambas (general coordinator of the Misak University), Lucy Tunubalá (Academique coordinator) y James Montano (comunal professor).

Cabildo De Guambia 2021. Documento Estudio de Factibilidad Comunitario Para la Formalización del Proceso Educativo Ala kusrei Ya – Misak Universidad denominado ‘aship, isup, mørøp, marøp pishindθ kusrep kømik (vivenciar la misak educación para vivir bien. Archivos del Cabildo Indígena de Guambía. Silvia, Cauca Colombia.

ONIC – Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia y Minagricultura - Ministerio de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural. 2000. Elementos conceptuales y metodología de los planes de vida. Bogotá: MJ Editores

Flórez-Vargas, Carlos. 2016 El concepto de Derecho Mayor: una aproximación desde la cosmología andina. Recuperado en: https://revistas.ucc.edu.co/index.php/di/article/view/1523 (Acceso: julio 11/2022)

James Montano Morales is part of the Miskak indigenous people of Colombia. He is an agriculturalist, PhD student in Ethnobiology and Biocultural Studies, Agricultural Engineer, and he has a Master in Interdisciplinary Development Studies and is a community teacher of the indigenous education process Ala Kusrei Ya - Misak University of the Cabildo of Guambia.

Lucy Elena Tunubalá Tombé is a Misak woman, Anthropologist from the University of Cauca. She is currently the academic coordinator of the Ala Kusrei Ya -Misak University, of the Misak people.

Fabio Calambás Paja is part of the Misak people of the indigenous reservation of Guambía (Cauca, Colombia). He is a Business Administrator and a specialist in Social Management. He is a co-founder and teacher of Ala Kusrei Ya Misak University, where he is currently in charge of the General Coordination of the Ala Kusrei Ya Misak University Project.