The International Congress on Indigenous Worlds (COIMI) is a biennial event created under the International Research Group Permanent Seminar on Indigenous Worlds - Abya Yala (SEPMIAI) at the Center for Humanities (CHAM/NOVA FCSH-UAC), Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal, in partnership with the Federal University of Campina Grande, Paraíba, Brazil, between April 27 and 28, 2015.
COIMI is a space for reflection and debate on topics related to indigenous peoples in Abya Yala. It is a collaborative network with academic dialogues and indigenous knowledge, both nationally and internationally, for interdisciplinary discussions on topics and issues concerning indigenous peoples in intercultural contexts, providing new epistemological reflections.
The 6th International Congress on Indigenous Worlds (VI COIMI - Abya Yala): Histories, Territorialities, and Indigenous Knowledge will take place at the University of the State of Bahia (UNEB), in Salvador, Bahia-Brazil, from February 25 to 28, 2026. The event aims to broaden dialogues between indigenous and non-indigenous researchers, construct other epistemological, historical, linguistic, political, decolonial, and interdisciplinary paths on histories, territorialities, indigenous knowledge, perspectives for well-being, as well as expand the scope of the network that has been built by COIMI within the Permanent Seminar on Indigenous Worlds - Abya Yala (SEPMIAI). This includes the integration of universities and researchers from countries in the Americas and Europe who have research, extension projects, and curricular practices in Basic and Higher Education on indigenous issues.
In this edition of the event, particular importance will be given to the notion that the histories, territorialities, and knowledge of indigenous peoples are interconnected elements that reveal the rich and complex trajectory of the original peoples in Abya Yala. Indigenous history, often marked by processes of depopulation and struggles/agencies for survival since the 16th century, is intrinsically linked to the importance of their territorialities and the value of their ancestral knowledge for the appreciation of nature, culture, languages, and their ethnicities.
Because of this, these peoples have historically been placed as objects of Western epistemologies, considered the only relevant ones, and never as subjects of their own epistemes. Nevertheless, the VI COIMI - Abya Yala aims to be a space for non-hierarchical relations between knowledge and wisdom, but one of exchange and interculturality in the different themes and activities that will be established by the organization of the scientific event.