JOÃO PAULO BARRETO
Indigenous education or even indigenous school education is a very complex issue when it comes to systems specific to each people or how to build an indigenous school education in a universe of cultural diversity in the same territory. For relief, the most common characteristic among peoples is Orality as a registered trademark of production and construction of knowledge, but it implies a series of other practices and factors, which cannot be discussed here.
The institutionalization of indigenous knowledge faces an even greater challenge, insofar as, as Justino Rezende of the Tuyuca people well expresses:
“Many of these speeches among our indigenous sages are not just made within large, public events, but are made in everyday conversations. In the fields while they cut ipadu leaves, leaf by leaf, filling the little aturá, sitting squatting, exercising their patience, meditating on the world that is there and where humanity is going, where men and women today think about walking and build your stories. These thoughts flourish when they sit in the ritual houses, eating ipadu, smoking cigarettes, passing these knowledge-generating elements to each other. The new knowledge emerges between serious speeches interspersed with delicious jokes. Seriousness, jokes, laughter, nicknames are ingredients that give good flavor to the environments of knowledge.”
Within this reality, Indigenous School Education is promoted, where values and meanings of each people are at stake. The freedom to live and think and the need to organize the territories force us to make use of conventional models, of the universe of objective concepts said to be universal, and feed a specific, intercultural and differentiated education of quality.
I keep thinking: what would be the role of institutions for the production and study of indigenous knowledge? To the extent that the model of production and reflection of indigenous knowledge belongs to science. In particular, I ask myself: what would a space for Indigenous School Education be? What would be the role, as a space for the formation and production of indigenous knowledge?
The training of indigenous specialists, yai , kumu or bay (in the case of the Tukano), and other specialties has its own cosmological foundation and space, where the “corporal ” is foundation for everyday experience. More than that, the formation of these specialties is specific to each people. That is, the Yanomamy they have their specific cosmological foundations to form their specialists, just as the Tukano have their own; that is, their initiation rituals, their dietary rules, sexual abstention and bahsesse own for this purpose. Thus, each people forms its own cosmology to form its specialists.
The provocation is, how to connect these specificities of the people with the institution’s objectives? I think that, in principle, this initiative (schools/institute/university) would be a space for the concentration of various peoples. As a democratic space, it can provide, for example, the “reflexivity ” on indigenous knowledge, making use of scientific methods, and thus, highlighting concepts, classification categories of animals, specifically indigenous plants.
This form of study involves analyzing the meaning of mythical narratives, producing text with language capable of opening a dialogue with the outside community, that is, outside the village. Such productions can lead to the proposal of a curriculum of subjects such as: Introduction to the theory of indigenous knowledge; Introduction to the study of indigenous narratives; Introduction to bahsesse; Introduction to bahsamori. But also an introduction to the principles of caxiri fermentation, trap construction techniques, etc. This means training young indigenous students capable of reflecting on indigenous knowledge and not on indigenous specialists in traditional ways.
Likewise, these spaces must be places of motivation for the training of indigenous specialists, embracing the specificity of each people, that is, as a profession the specialties yai , kumu or baya (in the case of the Tukano) “public recognition”, in fact and in law. Thus, whoever wanted to train in an indigenous specialty would have the same opportunity as whoever wanted to train in the areas of “reflexivity” on indigenous knowledge.
In this logic, institutionalized teaching spaces would be, at the same time, places for the production of indigenous philosophical and technological thought, as well as a space for training indigenous specialists. Therefore, I believe that indigenous concepts would become evident and ready for an intercultural dialogue with science.
João Paulo Barreto It’s indigenous of the Tukano ethnic group, born in the village of São Domingos in São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM). He holds a degree in Philosophy and a master’s degree in Anthropology from the Federal University of Amazonas (Ufam).
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