Paper short abstract:

Based on a bibliographical analysis of anthropological production on indigenous schooling in Brazil over the last 20 years, I argue that a genuine inter-epistemic dialogue has been emerging in the daily lives of indigenous villages schools, beyond the interculturality proposed in the legislation.

Paper long abstract:

The subject of indigenous schooling in Brazil, in the last twenty years, has received renewed anthropological interest, following the indigenous movement demanding schooling and access to Higher Education and Graduate Studies and the changes in legislation resulting from the 1998 Constitution. It has been a period of intense mobility between indigenous villages schools and Universities, motivated both by indigenous interest in access to academic knowledge and by affirmative action policies and the promotion of the training of indigenous teachers.

The 1988 Brazilian constitution is recognized as an important milestone for establishing that indigenous schools must use their mother tongues and their own learning processes. It initiated a series of public policies aimed at indigenous schooling, based on the principle of interculturality.

Despite the great difficulties of managing indigenous schools in Brazil, we can find several experiences that succeeded in transforming their daily routines to include non-hegemonic sources of knowledge, non-human masters and alternative teaching and learning processes. Based on a bibliographic review on indigenous schooling (2001-2021), we intend to point to the innovations and transformations of these schools.

Recent ethnographies on indigenous schools have revealed greater articulations of daily school life with several other aspects of social life, as shamanism, corporeality, personhood, gender, social and political organization, among others. I suggest that the floor of these schools is currently the true locus of emergence of a more equitable inter-epistemic dialogue, as they are rooted in the daily life of the villages, with their own dynamics and temporalities.