Indigenous Intercultural Pedagogy: dialogues on language, literacy and interculturalityABSTRACT
This article aims to present the UEA’s training experiences with indigenous teachers based on the Intercultural Pedagogy course, offered since 2018 to indigenous teachers in the State of Amazonas. The proposal is to highlight the creation and organization of the course, as well as the construction of the Pedagogical Project that is based on research and the specificities of interculturality and literacy in indigenous languages. Secondly, two reports from course participants are presented on the work they carry out with literacy and literacy in the context of the Spaces for the Study of the Mother Tongue and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (EELMCT) of the Manaus Department of Education (SEMED/Manaus). The data, analyzed from Larrosa (2002), Bettiol (2017), Cardoso (2024), Silva (2021), Freire (2010) show the progress of the course within the scope of the University of the State of Amazonas and reveal the particularities of the training of indigenous teachers in the regions where the degree was and is currently offered. It is hoped that this work will contribute to the recognition of the different training courses for indigenous teachers in the state of Amazonas, which presents great sociocultural and linguistic diversity.
Keywords:
Pedagogy; Intercultural; Indigenous teachers; Amazonas
RESUMO
Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar as experiências de formação da UEA com professores indígenas a partir do curso de Pedagogia Intercultural, que vem sendo ofertado desde 2018 na instituição. A proposta é destacar a criação e a organização do curso, bem como a construção do Projeto Pedagógico que se pauta na pesquisa e nas especificidades da interculturalidade e da alfabetização em línguas indígenas. Em segundo momento, apresentam-se dois relatos de cursistas sobre o trabalho que realizam com a alfabetização e o letramento no contexto dos Espaços de Estudos da Língua Materna e Conhecimentos Tradicionais Indígenas (EELMCT) da Secretaria de Educação de Manaus (SEMED/Manaus). Os dados, analisados com base em Larrosa (2002), Bettiol (2017), Cardoso (2024), Silva (2021), Freire (2010), mostram o avanço do curso no âmbito da Universidade do Estado do Amazonas e revelam as particularidades da formação de professores indígenas nas regiões onde a licenciatura foi e é atualmente ofertada. Espera-se com este trabalho contribuir com o reconhecimento das diferentes formações para professores indígenas no Estado do Amazonas que se apresentam, na UEA, com grande diversidade sociocultural e linguística.
Palavras-chave:
Pedagogia; Interculural; Professores indígenas; Amazonas
Introduction - Training Experiences of Indigenous Teachers in the State of Amazonas (Brazil)
This text begins with the experience lived in the training courses for indigenous teachers in the state of Amazonas, while both a meeting place and a time-space in relation. As pointed out by Larossa, “the experience is what we go through, what happens to us, what touches us” (2002, p. 21). This quote carries an idea of movement and the creation of new meanings, because, as the author reassures, every day, something different happens, creating new meanings. However, the author warns that, at this very moment, “almost nothing happens to us”. This dual meaning, brought up by the author, points out that the experience only occurs when we “try”, when we “taste”, in the sense of tasting, a certain event. Therefore, he points out that, either in Germanic languages or Latin languages, “the word experience has inseparably the dimension of passage and danger” (Larrosa, 2002, p. 25), these two dimensions and perspectives are the ones that guided the movements lived in the training courses for indigenous teachers in Amazonas.
The classes of the Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy Course in Alto Solimões, São Paulo de Olivença (2014-2018), and the Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy Course in Vale do Javari, Atalaia do Norte (2016-2022), explored the meaning and the strength brought by the dimension of the word experience. The experiences lived in the training courses for indigenous teachers were only possible because they carried the idea of passage when they returned to the Ethno-educational Territory (TEE) Alto Solimões, and the challenge of working at TEE Vale do Javari, which had never been assisted before. This journey was only possible because of the two previous experiences. As Bettiol points out (2017):
The experience of UEA in training indigenous teachers is grounded in studies, research, and the development of specific courses. The first of these, a full Licentiate Degree program for Indigenous Teachers of Alto Solimões, was offered in Benjamin Constant/AM, within the indigenous community of Filadélfia. It started in 2007 and graduated about 200 indigenous teachers. The course was a training project for indigenous teachers in collaboration with the Organization of Bilingual Tikuna Teachers (OGPTB), working in conjunction with the Ministry of Education (MEC) through the Program of Higher Education and Indigenous Licentiate Program (PROLIND). The other course, Pedagogy with training in Interculturality (which ended in 2014), was not specifically designed for indigenous teachers, as it also supported riverside residents, students from rural cities, and teachers from rural schools. It reached more than 30 different peoples from various Ethno-educational Territories, in an in-person format supported by technology (Bettiol, 2017, p. 57).
Another dimension of the word’ experience,’ which was added during the organization of the training course, was the necessity of thinking about articulated actions: the discussion about assisting the demands of the indigenous movement, and the search for financial help were preponderant for the implementation of the course. The institution of “National Policy of Professionals Training of Basic Education Teaching/ PARFOR” (Decree Nº 6.755, of January 29th of 2009) made the materialisation of a walk and the work in two Ethno-educational Territories possible: In TEE Alto Solimões, where UEA had already developed two previous courses, as well as the implementation of the first specific course designed for the training of indigenous teachers in TEE Vale do Javari (Souza, 2022).
The experiences of the training courses in Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy of Alto Solimões and Vale do Javari took place in the scope of PARFOR, and after intense articulation and pressure from the indigenous movement, many discussions were articulated, demands were created, and claims were elaborated, especially the specific needs that were not initially described in the actions of the PARFOR Vanguard1 classes, as like: the scholarship offer for the permanency of the indigenous teachers; the work of knowledge masters well known for indigenous organization as guest coaches; and the training for alternation. It was through these discussions and claims that, since 2023, four more classes were created: one in Manaus and the other one in Boa Vista do Ramos, in TEE Baixo Amazonas; a class in Tefé, and another in Fonte Boa, municipalities located in TEE Médio Solimões.
The release of the PARFOR Equity joint notice arises as an action of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education People (CAPES), idealized along with the Department of Continuous Education, Alphabetization of Young People and Adults, Diversity and Inclusion (SECADI/MEC), and represents to UEA how experiences of indigenous teachers’ training in the State of Amazonas can produce policies beyond its borders. As described on the Capes2 website, this is a special action within an existing program (PARFOR), which has already educated more than 100,000 teachers of basic education who did not have the proper training in their field of work in public schools. It was from the release of this notice that three more classes of PARFOR Equity will start in 2025, namely: municipality of Manicoré (TEE Baixo e Médio Madeira), municipality of Beruri (TEE Baixo Amazonas), and municipality of Jutaí (TEE Médio Solimões)3.
The field of Experiences and Dialogue with Indigenous
The reflection about the collective work for the organization of the Pedagogical Project of the Course (PPC) is grounded in the intercultural perspective, because the specific courses for the training of the teachers presuppose the relationship between the different cultures, in this case, the cultures of various indigenous peoples and the culture of non-indigenous people involved in this process. These differences are situated in the field of identities, as well as in the knowledge that the curriculum framework encompasses.
With this idea in place, we proceed to the interculturality discussions, basing ourselves on indigenous authors such as Cardoso (2024) and other non-indigenous authors. Our studies are also aligned with Paulo Freire’s idea of the dialogical man, because the collective production processes in such a plural society as ours call us to reflect on the intercultural relations that weave our diverse education spaces. These dialogical relationships are not free of tension and conflict, considering that societies have various forms of organization, education, and diverse knowledge that compound their ethos. However, it is equally necessary to comprehend the interculturality we are guided by, as we bring it to the following.
The functional interculturality is defined by Tubino (2005, p. 2) as a concept that doesn’t “cuestiona las reglas de juego y es perfectamente compatible con la lógica del modelo neo-liberal existente”; therefore, it does not contemplate what should be the relationship between different cultures, because it perpetuates the inequality in society and the colonial relationships.
The relational interculturality, according to Catherine Walsh (2010, p. 77), is based on an exchange between cultures, values, practices, and knowledge that can be outlined in equality or inequality conditions, without yet questioning the dominance relations within the scope of coloniality. Cardoso (2024) analyzes that
[...] the difference between the functional interculturality and the relational interculturality is that the former is used to keep the coloniality dominance, while the relational interculturality, although it already echoes the indigenous’ voices, does so without questioning the dominance processes that may be behind the construction of the schools’ curriculum. (Cardoso, 2024, p. 124)
Corroborating with the analysis of Cardoso (2024), we also believe that the critical interculturality, pointed by Walsh (2009, p. 204) as “un proyecto que cuestiona las ausencias - de saberes, tiempos, diferencias, etc. - y piensa y trabaja desde las emergencias que se revelan”, is the one that better contemplates the discussions that permeate or did permeate the collective construction of the curriculum core of the Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy course.
Still reflecting on this, Cardoso (2024, p. 195) discusses that the critical interculturality is based on this dialogical relation that is present in the writings of Freire, seeing that “[...] the dialogical emancipatory relation and the dialogical interculturality have the same meaning, in a way that does not exist interculturality that is not a relationship between values’ centers”. Within the scope of interculturality discussions, we analyze the intertwined relationships between the university and the indigenous peoples in the collective production of the curriculum core.
About the Experiences in the Training of Indigenous Teachers
This section begins with the discussions and movements aimed at implementing training courses for indigenous teachers in the State of Amazonas; at this moment, the confrontation with the dual dimension of experience (Larrosa, 2002) was inevitable. In the first one, the passage occurred when, during the trip to familiarize ourselves with the Ethno-educational Territory of Alto Solimões, we heard the words: “We need to alphabetize our Tikuna, Kambeba, and Kokama children” for the first time. At that time, the discussions were articulated in the possibility of creating a new “specific” training course for indigenous teachers.
In these wanderings around the TEE Alto Solimões, the issues “We need to alphabetize”, and “We lack a Pedagogy course that’s intercultural”, since the “alphabetization happens in the early school years” and “We need a linguist that leads this process along with the Tikuna, Kambeba, and Kokama” made possible for the team to cross and allowed an expansion in the understanding of what is done in a Pedagogy course, of what’s produced while an alphabetization process and what is understood as interculturality in the training of indigenous teachers.
Among many concerns, it was possible to encounter another dimension of the experience (Larrosa, 2002) - the danger - when given space to the experience, the second dimension was brought by the novelty of leading a training process of indigenous teachers focused on the alphabetization, either in the Portuguese Language and the Tikuna Language, and also to the Kokama and Kambeba teachers, the request was to do a work of revitalization in their languages. After these doubts and concerns were presented, we initiated a discussion of what would be a Pedagogy course focused on an intercultural relationship, the principles of the indigenous school education, and how it was analyzed in the many discussions of the Structuring Teacher Center (NDE). It is one of the most complex principles to be debated and lived at the indigenous schools.
The Vale do Javari Course is analyzed in the doctoral thesis of Souza (2022), which recovers the creation journey of the Vale do Javari Inter-institutional Work Group of Education, pointing out that the discussions of the GT, through the thematic seminars, aimed to debate the demands for Indigenous School Education in the Vale do Javari
It was through the seminars hosted by the Education GT that the Education Department of the Municipality of Atalaia do Norte submitted the document requesting the first Teaching Training Course for Teachers of the Municipality Network. The document is addressed to the Permanent State Forum for Teacher Support (FEPAFD/AM) and presents requests for training vacancies, along with a list of teachers (Souza, 2022, p. 91).
Therefore, “the intensification of the speech around the request for a new Teachers Training Course (...) in a higher education, the seminars about Indigenous Teaching organized by UEA in 2014 and 2015 continued” (p. 90). The demands for a course focused on the language and the production of didactic material were presented again among the discussions about the elaboration of an “indigenous curriculum”, bringing in its essence the intercultural discussions.
The PPC’s of Baixo Amazonas (Municipalities of Manaus and Boa Vista dos Ramos) and Médio Solimões (Municipalities of Tefé and Fonte Boa) accompanied the discussions about indigenous languages, alphabetization, and literacy. The course objectives are based on the strengthening and (re)vitalization of indigenous languages, the training of educators in indigenous languages, and the development of activities to promote literacy in indigenous languages.
The discussion of the work with/in indigenous languages based on the PCC and the methodologies used in the research conducted in the courses.
This section begins by highlighting that UEA already had accumulated experience in training indigenous teachers, but not specifically in the mentioned field. This article proposes to discuss the teaching training experiences of the TEEs in Alto Solimões and Vale do Javari, and weaves reflections about the intercultural dialogue between indigenous peoples and the university, as well as the emphasis on the alphabetization processes and literacy in indigenous languages and Portuguese as a second language.
The first discussions about the Pedagogical Project of the Course (PPC) were directed to the claim of indigenous teachers from Alto Solimões for a higher education course. Initially, it seemed to be about an intercultural teaching degree; however, in the meetings between the municipality’s Indigenous School Education coordinators and its representatives, it was present in a specific form what they were looking forward to: a course to work with the alphabetization of children in their mother tongue and the Portuguese language.
In this meeting, it was decided to create an Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy course focused on alphabetization and literacy in the mother tongue and Portuguese as a second language, or vice versa, depending on the situation of each participant of the peoples. It was presented as a challenge to the university, the indigenous communities, and, consequently, to the teachers and the participants of the course. As pointed out by the PPC of the Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy course of Alto Solimões,
The guiding axis directed towards the work with the mother language, proposed by them, was configured as a response to the efforts that these peoples made for the revitalization of the indigenous language and the maintenance of the culture. As previously mentioned, the ethnicities Kokama and Kambeba are going through a process of confirming their ethnic identity. The Tikunas, fluent speakers of their own language, seek bilingual alphabetization, and they are also concerned with keeping alive the language and culture of these people (PPC of the Course, 2018, p. 40).
The first challenge was partially overcome because the indigenous people themselves recommended linguists who knew and had researched their languages in previous times, and these linguists responded quickly when invited. In the face of this articulation, the general objective of the course aimed the training of indigenous teachers in higher education to act as educators focusing on the teaching of the Indigenous Language in the Primary Education and the early years of Elementary School, besides the assistance in the processes of the School Management and the monitoring of the pedagogical work at the Indigenous Schools of Alto Solimões. (PPC of the Course, 2018, p. 46) .
Another challenge for the Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy Course of Alto Solimões was the inclusion of specific subjects in the core curriculum, as they traditionally belong to the linguistic field and, in the Pedagogy course, they appear in only a few syllabi as linguistics applied to education. Alongside this, there is a need for specialists to work with indigenous languages, and training in a Structuring Teaching Center (NDE) that can support this need. Therefore, based on the discussions and the training necessities, the subjects focused on indigenous languages offered in Alto Solimões were:
The experience lived in the Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy Course of Alto Solimões, with the insertion of linguist specialists in indigenous languages, with the inclusion of specific subjects in the core curriculum, and with the development of pedagogical research about the revitalization of the languages and preservation of the indigenous cultures, made the elaboration of the PPC of the course of Vale do Javari to be led to a deeper discussion about the indigenous languages and cultures, as pointed out by the following table:
It is important to emphasize that the elaboration of the specific curriculum with subjects focused on language teaching, alphabetization, and literacy is an important first step, but equally important was the participation of a linguist with knowledge on the languages spoken at Vale do Javari (Katukina Family and Pano Family), and the involvement of an educator specialized in alphabetization and literacy in the mother languages. Besides, the research and supervised internship projects had an intimate relationship with linguistics, and the production of didactic materials focused on indigenous schools where the teachers in training worked.
All these issues or situations raise important points to think about regarding the training and work of educators who teach in the specific training courses for indigenous teachers at the university. When the subjects of the teachers’ training are others, the pedagogical concepts that guide the practices of the school education are “obligated” to be others (Arroyo, 2017).
What is the place of the languages here?
The first challenge was to move into the “defined” space as the core curriculum of the Pedagogy course and its traditions. The proposal was to occupy the place either with the phonetics and phonology of indigenous languages, or with the work methodologies for teaching and use of the Portuguese language as a second language, and yet with other ancestral communication ways.
The collective work among indigenous speakers, linguists, and educators has brought results that are being continually improved through the experience initiated with the first classes and ongoing in the current classes. Among them, we highlight the growth of the course NDE in terms of comprehending that linguistic reflection and language teaching practice must be a concern that extends beyond the subjects, also reaching the use of these languages as either a primary or a second language in the context of indigenous schools.
Souza, Bettiol, and Oliveira (2020, p. 369) analyze this process by highlighting “the recognition, on the training teachers’ part, that their languages are organized (they have a structure) and, in this sense, are similar to the dominant language in our society”. The authors also point out that in this direction, the course “[…] cooperates for the development of what Monserrat (1994) calls as the “language feeling” and collaborates for the thought of a linguistic enrichment.” (our emphasis), as proposed by Maher (2007).
In this context, the critical interculturality, as previously presented, guides us to a work that emphasizes the “linguistic enrichment”; therefore, learning a second language (in this case, the Portuguese language) does not aim to replace the indigenous language, nor to stop using it, instead it looks for methodologies that strengthen the use of the indigenous language at the school and at the community that is inserted on.
D’Angelis (2020) warns of the need for training courses to consider the sociolinguistic reality of their public, the depth of the studies about or in the indigenous literature, and, among other issues pointed by the author, he suggests activities that prioritize a communicative approach with the indigenous teachers.
In this direction, we emphasize the presence of linguists who work specifically with indigenous languages, the specialists on intercultural Portuguese - the Portuguese used by indigenous people that carries other marks of its ancestral language - and educators with expertise in alphabetization and literacy.
We highlight the interdisciplinary perspective as an essential part, even though the course is organized in an interdisciplinary way, there is an inter-relation between the subjects and, when each module is finished, a component named “Special Topics” that articulates the research in the communities to the teaching work, in a way that the results of these research are discussed in the classes and outcome in productions of materials that will be used at the schools. For instance, we mention the linguistic mapping of schools and communities that brought together various types of knowledge and provided an opportunity for the discussion about the languages’ situation in each context of teachers in training.
It is equally important to register that the continuous evaluation of the courses, by each class, by the indigenous movement, by the course NDE, and by the universities’ own forms of course evaluation (in the case of UEA, by the State Council of Education and the Internal Evaluation Committee), is always moving us towards the search for a greater specificity that is increasingly aligned with the critical and dialogical interculturality, as proposed by Cardoso (2024).
The Experiences in Alphabetization and Literacy of the Teachers in Training - Intercultural Pedagogy
In this section, we will present the intercultural experiences of two indigenous teachers who are current students of the Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy Course, offered in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State. It consists of a presentation based on the oral and written reports produced through the curriculum components classes, Portuguese for specific use, and Alphabetization in Indigenous Languages I, from March 2024 to January 2025. During the execution of these components, we had as an initial strategy to comprehend the alphabetization practices that had already been done by the indigenous teachers, which work is held at the Indigenous School (EI) or in the Space for the Study of the Mother Tongue and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge (EELMCT) of the Manaus Education Department (SEMED/Manaus). We propose to highlight this space here, called by the cultural teachers, where they develop practices and didactic material in alphabetization and literacy in the indigenous language, aiming to revitalize, strengthen, and appreciate the mother tongue in an urban context.
We highlight that, in SEMED/Manaus, there is a legislature that regulates, in the municipality area, the creation of indigenous schools and study spaces for the mother tongue, as well as determines the alphabetization in indigenous languages:
The Indigenous School Education is a part of the Education Municipality System and can be operationalized in the form of a specific, integral, distinguished, intercultural, and bilingual education for the indigenous peoples of the municipality of Manaus (Chapter I, Sole Paragraph, Law No. 2,781, of September 16, 2021, Municipal Government of Manaus).
[…]
Space for the Study of the Mother Tongue and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge: space of bilingual learning, destined to the transmission of traditional knowledge, based on the affirmation, appreciation, and strengthening of mother languages and cultural identities of indigenous peoples of Manaus, operationalized as an attached class of a municipal indigenous school that guarantees pedagogical autonomy, a particular pedagogical political project and community democratic management of the bilingual space based on the specific planning, considering the multi-ethical identity affirmation of the city of Manaus (Chapter II, Sole Paragraph, Law No. 2,781, of September 16, 2021, Municipal Government of Manaus).
The spaces, 18 in total in operation, according to the information from the Indigenous School Education Management Office of Manaus (2024), are located in urban indigenous community areas and are presented to teachers and indigenous leaders as physical and symbolic places of preservation of the traditional and linguistic knowledge, even while being apart from their relatives and original villages.
Regarding the indigenous presence in the city and their organization into urban communities that were a base for the creation of these spaces, we highlight that various factors lead the indigenous peoples to the big cities: escaping from the exploitation they were subjected mainly in the political colonization process; seeking for a better life quality; desire to pursue a higher education, work opportunities, among others. The city, when turning into a new place, presents itself as a space for accomplishments, change, and adaptation, while also becoming a space for struggle and resistance. In this sense, when the indigenous languages arrive in an urban context, they can make some choices: either they completely change their lifestyle and adapt to a new cultural process, in this case, a non-indigenous cultural process, or turn the city also into a place for demarcation of their rights, of their customs, and of their cultural and linguistic heritage. Our discussion here directly portrays this second option: the indigenous people mark their identity even when outside their original environment; through the interethnic contacts and express their sense of belonging, creating together with their relatives, indigenous communities in urban contexts, which requires recognition from the local and state governments for the assistance of their specific needs, as it occurs to education, exemplified by the Space for the Study of the Mother Tongue and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge (EELMCT) in the city of Manaus.
To demonstrate the indigenous presence in Manaus, we refer to the research of Pereira (2016), Indigenous at the metropolis: multi-ethnic fights and collective identity in the city of Manaus (AM), which identified in Manaus, in 2015, according to the Coordination of Indigenous Peoples of Manaus and Surroundings (COPIME), 34 indigenous peoples living in 51 neighborhoods, namely: Munduruku, Tikuna, Sateré-Mawé, Desana, Tukano, Miranha, Kaixana, Baré, Kokama, Apurinã, Tuyuka, Piratapuya, Kamaiura, Kambeba, Mura, Maraguá, Baniwa, Macuxi, Wanano, Tariano, Bará, Arara [do Aripuanã], Karapãna, Barasana, Anambé, Deni, Kanamari, Katukina, Kubeo, Kulina, Marubo, Paumari, Arara do Pará and Manchineri.
Regarding the language, the author’s data reveals that around nineteen languages are spoken: “Munduruku, Tikuna, Mawé, Mura, Desano, Tukano, Baré, General Amazonic Language (Nhengatu), Piratapuya, Wanano, Apurinã, Tariano, Kaixana, Kokama, Karapãna, Tuyuka, Barasana, Baniwa e Kambeba - in 41 neighborhoods” (Pereira, 2016, p. 10).
These neighborhoods are located mainly in the eastern and northern zones of the city. Furthermore, we also know that, in the Amazonian capital, there are three significant occupation areas with great indigenous concentration, just as “Indigenous Peoples of Rising Sun Settlement ”, the “Indigenous Nations Community”, and the “Tribes’ Park”, where more than 800 families of 20 different peoples live (Pereira, 2016).
To the author, the city does not take away the indigenous right to live and maintain their culture. He disagrees with the idea of “acculturated” because the city-village movement represents the emerging process of social life conditions, of the need to come and go to claim spaces and fight for their rights.
All this sociolinguistic diversity presented in the city of Manaus requires public policies that can support health, education, territorial rights, and safety of the indigenous populations. The EELMCT represents one of the policies implemented by the city hall; however, there is still much to change and achieve, as the spaces do not yet have proper physical structures, and there is no support for the production of specific didactic materials for teaching indigenous languages.
The indigenous teachers who work in these spaces mostly do not have higher education; many of them graduated from the Piraywara Indigenous Teaching program and are currently in the initial training process of the Intercultural Indigenous Pedagogy course, offered by UEA. When questioned about how they work with alphabetization and literacy in their communities, the unanimous answer is that the emphasis is on speaking, a tradition of the indigenous cultures that allows kids, young people, and adults assisted by the EELMCT to speak the indigenous language.
As follows, we present the first written report of a teacher from the Tukano people who works at one of the spaces of the Tukano language:
The children go through an alphabetization process inside the classroom, in a way that the teacher invites an elder for a story time in the classroom, then the elder starts to tell the story and does it in the mother language, to the kids who don’t understand or speak the mother language, he tells the story in Portuguese, therefore, he does two narratives, one in the mother language and the other in Portuguese language, when he finishes the story the teacher comes with speaking question activities for the students according to their age, for the young people the questions are asked in the mother language, for the kids the questions are asked by using drawings with the characters’ names in both mother tongue and Portuguese language. The literacy is done by written activities, oral, drawing, pictures, rewriting of the story words, animals’ drawings, and information about the characters in the mother tongue and the Portuguese language (Written report, Tukano teacher, 2025).
We observed that, in a multigrade context, the Tikuna teacher works with speaking, according to the students’ age, in a bilingual level: for the ones who speak the language, the activities are in the mother tongue; for the students who neither understand nor speak the language, the activities are in Portuguese to get to the indigenous language. Moreover, the pedagogical process uses various methods, such as storytelling by an elder, the use of drawings, and graphisms, always highlighting the speaking and writing of the indigenous language.
The indigenous alphabetization and literacy must promote social practices for the use of the language in diverse social situations. The purpose is to promote traditional knowledge and cultural appreciation. We can say that, in the Tukano teacher’s report, the language is the guiding axis of his practices; it determines how he’s going to teach his student, whether this student may or may not know the original language. It’s through the language that, in the space of studies of language and traditional knowledge, the culture is evoked, the ancestry is experienced. Regarding this, Silva (2021) affirms that
[...] the teaching of an indigenous language will always have as an organizing axis the nature and the pedagogical practices seen in a connected way. Therefore, teaching and studying an indigenous language means activating the vast range of meanings that are already implied in the cultural and ecological systems. These are statements populated by ancestral voices, by cosmic words, spiritual vibration words, craft, musicals, and knowledge of places, kinship terms, etc. (p. 260, 2021).
The indigenous language as a guiding axis for the spread of ancestral, cultural, and traditional knowledge of a people is also the work developed by the Karapãna teacher in the space where he teaches, as well as the appreciation of the elders’ knowledge:
The alphabetization and literacy work is developed through a social project of the cultural thematics directed for the development of learning research according to the knowledge of the elders of the community through the art, singing, cultural dances, the teaching of the cultivation of medicinal plants, Nheengatú writing, the daily chores of the indigenous cultures, and another mechanism used are the educational practices, in painting, body graphisms, crafting (Written report, Karapãna teacher, 2025).
In this report, we find a pedagogical practice of the spaces and indigenous schools of SEMED/Manaus that is the development of a social project, chosen and approved by the community. Based on a theme, the teacher develops their actions, activities, the texts that will be prioritized, as well as the participation of the elders, among others, aiming to work with the aspects of the people’s culture and language. Another highlight noted by the teacher is that the alphabetization and literacy process involves daily practices such as graphisms, paintings, songs, and medicinal plants, always using the Nheengatu language as the base for developing speaking and writing skills. Pimental (2020) shows that all these practices are essential for the recognition of the indigenous literacy, pointing out that:
The challenge, then, is to bring the knowledge of the communities to the indigenous schools and include them in the pedagogical and political projects without linking them to our logics of knowledge construction, reproduction, and legitimation, but rather to engage in intercultural critical education. It’s necessary to understand that languages are not only linguistic systems to be decomposed, described, and analyzed, but also systems that encompass many other sociocosmic components. The indigenous languages follow the history, the discoveries, the economy, the customs, the politics, the religion and are always opened and receptive to the updates, the innovations, the discoveries, the inventions, and changes that transform the world, and at the same time, the language, the culture and the ways of living and thinking of the different indigenous peoples (p. 259, 2020).
Regarding this, we can affirm that the indigenous alphabetization and literacy are different from other practices of language use, of other literacies, because the work that is presented in the spaces that are presented here prioritizes the strengthening of the mother language, the appreciation of the culture, the predominance of speaking, and the recognition of the ancestry. And it happens, mostly, in the intercultural discussion, in bilingual processes, in the production of didactic materials, in contact with the elderly, with nature, with the river, and in the resistance that is necessary to live the indigenous language and culture in an urban context. These are appropriate practices to alphabetize and literate in the indigenous language that addresses its special needs in the context of the Indigenous Educational School, which promotes dialogues, as we were taught by Paulo Freire (2010) to break with the asymmetries and put in the spotlight another way to teach, another language, and another culture.
Conclusion
This article aimed to present the UEA’s experiences with indigenous teachers’ training, specifically through the Intercultural Pedagogy course, which has contributed to the indigenous populations of Amazonas since 2018.
With its own curriculum, based on the linguistic and cultural research of each region where the course was and is currently offered, the training practices differ from each other to meet the interests and the specific needs of the Indigenous School Education, with processes of interculturality and social practices that change and intersect across the different forms of indigenous knowledge.
To comprehend this entire process, we understand that, in the field of indigenous teachers’ training, dialogue is a mandatory process. We’re all teachers and learners, as Paulo Freire once said, because the one who takes on the role of educator learns from this field of diverse cultures, and the one who is “in training” also teaches.
We learned to coexist and to be open to intercultural dialogue. And the way of reading the world, as taught by Freire (2010), occurs in this space where languages, cultures and other types of knowledge interrelate, complement each other, and are presented to each other, such as what we’ve seen with alphabetization and literacy experiences of the course students in the spaces for studies of indigenous languages and cultures in the city of Manaus.
With this work, we intend to contribute to the indigenous teachers’ training processes, a process that is never finished or completed, but takes on new meanings in each context, space, and interculturality, as revealed in the Intercultural Pedagogy course of UEA.
References
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Support or funding:
Amazonas State University (UEA)
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Availability of research data:
The entire dataset supporting the results of this study was published in the article itself.
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1
The classes of Manaus, Tefé, Boa Vista do Ramos, and Fonte Boa were established before the Equity Joint Notice and are nominated by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education People (CAPES), as PARFOR Vanguard.
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2
Joint Notice No. 23/2023, published on September 23, 2023, and updated on March 21, 2024, on the Capes website.
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3
The state of Amazonas, through Decree No. 6.861/2009, established seven (7) Ethno-Educational Territories (TEEs). However, discussions with the indigenous movement, indigenous and indigenist organizations, and government institutions led to the creation of two (2) additional TEEs. Currently, Amazonas has a total of nine (9) TEEs (Vieira, 2023, p. 82).
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How to cite this article:
BETTIOL, Celia Aparecida; SILVA, Jeiviane Justiniano da; SOUZA, Adria Simone Duarte de. Indigenous Interculturality: Dialogues on Language, Literacy, and Interculturality. Educar em Revista, Curitiba, v. 42, e98183, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1590/1984-0411.98183-T
The entire dataset supporting the results of this study was published in the article itself.
