Assistência estudantil para os estudantes indígenas na Universidade Federal de Santa Maria: caminhos e desafios

Abstract

This paper concludes the Social Services course with research that aims to analyse documents and legislation at national level, and internal documents from the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) regarding academic welfare with a focus on the academic welfare of indigenous students at the UFSM. Using the critical dialectical method, this research involved qualitative documental analysis; it involved documents, legislations, edicts, regulations and reports that determine the Student Welfare Policy at a national level and also within the UFSM, linking to and considering the reality of the Federal Universities Support and Restructuring Program; the National Student Welfare Initiative; positive discrimination; the indigenous question; the social question; student welfare; and the professional role of the social worker within education policies are among the research’s theoretical themes. Albeit recent, this topic is still being addressed by the social service in a timid way but with a rise in demand for, and investments into, academic welfare according to the data presented in the research; it is therefore essential that this debate receives more visibility as a professional category. Some results identified from the research are: the necessity to create a National Academic Welfare Policy that will replace the previous one; the need to establish internal rules that regulate academic welfare for indigenous students at the UFSM; and the need to introduce positive discrimination in the postgraduate programs of the UFSM, among others exhibited in the research’s final conclusions.