Epistemic restitution in the Virtual Thirdspace of global education: a critical digital ethnography of trans-Indigenous solidarity

This article investigates the decolonial potential of embedding Indigenous rights and environmental justice into higher education curricula through the collaborative production of investigative documentaries in Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) modules. Grounded in a critical digital ethnography of five multi-sited virtual exchanges (2023–2025) involving 103 undergraduate higher education students and Indigenous leaders from Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and Germany, the research analyzes how navigating the contested Virtual Thirdspace impacts the awareness, agency, and autonomous thinking of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. In the Venezuelan Orinoco Mining Arc, Munduruku territories in Brazil, and Oaxaca, Mexico, the COIL pedagogy confronted extractivist violence and catalyzed a profound pedagogical inversion. Findings show that non-Indigenous students moved beyond civic apathy to develop pielpatía (embodied empathy) and critical socio-environmental awareness, while Indigenous cohorts reclaimed narrative authority and operated as a trans-Indigenous digital vanguard. Ultimately, sustaining these decolonial impacts and fostering cross-cultural autonomy requires grounding digital pedagogies in an essential literacy of socio-environmental precarity.