Banca de DEFESA: Luiz Carlos Lages Sarmento Albuquerque Marques

PATHS TO SCHOOL EDUCATION OF THE WARAO PEOPLE IN RORAIMA

indigenous schooling - indigenous migration - indigenous peoples of Venezuela

This work addresses the implementation of intercultural education initiatives in the context of the migration of indigenous peoples from Venezuela to Brazil, specifically those developed within and through the integration of these indigenous individuals as students in public schools in the state of Roraima, accompanied or not by indigenous monitors and/or teachers as intercultural educators. The methodology employed consists of a bibliographic review on the topic of intercultural indigenous education in Brazil and the recent wave of indigenous migration from Venezuela to Brazil, with a focus on the Warao people. I give an account of meetings, courses, seminars and other events associated with the formulation and execution of educational policies for indigenous peoples of Venezuela, along with in person and remote conversations with teachers, leaders, and other members of different communities of the Warao people, especially in the state of Roraima. Some of the results demonstrate that although the Warao communities are in Brazil as migrants and refugees, there are common challenges also experienced by Brazilian indigenous peoples in implementing intercultural education, linguistic preservation, and revitalization projects in public schools, even in a scenario where there is an abundance of teachers and elders. The clash between the Brazilian public education system and the educational and linguistic demands and needs of the Warao people evokes old and new forms of anti-indigenous racism in Brazilian schooling, experienced in the daily lives of students, fathers and mothers, and teachers. The difficulty in offering intercultural public policies in urban settings, the dispute over the legal meaning of “indigenous”, and the meanings of interculturality in school education, are some of the consequences of this clash, from which new fronts for transforming stale relationships in the educational management of indigenous schools may emerge, adjusted within the struggle for the linguistic and cultural preservation of the Warao people and other native peoples of Venezuela and Brazil.