Avoiding cultural uprooting of indigenous children who are outside their territory and immersed in the national education system is one of the requests made to the State by the teacher and member of the Migrant Indigenous Movement outside Territories (Mifutes), Eduardo Rojas.
Mifutes brings together nearly 5,000 members of the almost 63,000 indigenous Mifutes who live in the country and its representative raised his voice to denounce the neglect that, in his opinion, exists around migrant indigenous people in Costa Ricans.
Lacking cultural references
Rojas assured that in the Costa Rican public education system there are about 10,000 Mifute indigenous children, who develop in an environment that lacks cultural references about their identity.
“We ask that the State take affirmative action against cultural uprooting, that it assume (the State) the responsibility of mapping these 10,000 children and that it prevent it from continuing to promote this cultural uprooting because an indigenous child, for example, goes to a school in San José and there is nothing that identifies their cultural roots. There is no ranch, nor any indigenous worldview around him,” said Eduardo Rojas.
More requests
Four more were added to that request: an administrative organization of the State that represents indigenous people outside the territory, since according to Rojas the National Commission for Indigenous Affairs does not cover the needs of the migrant indigenous population; housing projects, support for agricultural activities and the strengthening of organizations such as the Pablo Presbere Technological Institute “which can help communities in rescuing indigenous culture.”
“The State must assume responsibility (for the attention of the Mifute indigenous people) because until today it has not assumed it,” the indigenous leader stressed. Rojas considered that there are sectors in the country that see migrant indigenous people as a threat, others as an opportunity, but few see the needs that exist around them so that they feel immersed in society without there being a loss of identity, language and culture.
