LEARNING OF INDIGENOUS TEACHERS IN BRAZIL: CONSOLIDATION OF AN INTERCULTURAL PROPOSAL IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

Since the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil in 1988, the management of the governmental institutions responsible for accompanying the indigenous people in the programs of strengthening, visibility and integration of their sociocultural values into the national project has been expanded. Therefore, meetings with traditional authorities, public officials and external persons interested in contributing to community processes began to take place more frequently and intensely. As a result of these struggles and associations, at the beginning of this millennium, an initiative to create higher courses in several federal and state public universities in the country for the professionalization of indigenous people who work as teachers in their respective communities came up. These programs were called “Intercultural Bachelor's Degrees” and are designed exclusively to assist the territorial and educational demands of indigenous populations, through the consolidation of teaching practice in basic education schools. Taking into account a bibliographic review, this article intends to expose a critical analysis, based on intercultural and political discussions, about the intercultural proposal for the training of indigenous teachers, considering the potentials and challenges it has had since its creation until the present day. The results lead us to affirm that these higher education courses reach some of the criteria that appear in the official discourse, but do not achieve a true intercultural dynamic, which allows us to deconstruct the legitimacy of the concept and question its applicability.