Indigenous school education and interculturality: A possible and necessary dialogue

Abstract

This text focuses on issues related to indigenous school education in Brazil, as well as the assumptions of interculturality to think about it. This is a theoretical research, of a qualitative nature. Indigenous school education in Brasil today demands a critical and careful posture. What today is known as the Brazilian Nation was formed through the meeting of three ethnical-cultural origins: the Tupi-Guarani, the Portuguese and the African. Such confirmation refers to an obvious conclusion: any educational proposition that is intended as generous and inclusive needs to take into account the matters relative to the cultural diversity of the Brazilian society. For this intercultural dialogue to happen it is necessary to break with the colonial mentality. There must be a relationship paradigm that recognizes and respects the indigenous singularity and promotes its protagonism (Castro, 2000). The LDB proposes a group of guidelines that even with its frailties, if put to practice, could provide progress in the public policies about the indigenous school education. The educational progress in the indigenous communities– taking the Guarani as an example – happens through an exchange of experiences, building a collective knowledge, intermediated by the Karaí. We propose an indigenous school education that takes as its starting point some interculturality fundaments, mediated by dialogicity.