Indigenous writings: a poetic-pedagogical experience

Abstract

In the last decades, projects of expansion in Brazil have expanded and multiplied. differentiated school education whose protagonists are indigenous teachers trained in courses promoted by NGOs and / or government agencies. More recently, training reached the 3rd degree, with the organization of the first indigenous university courses. Some questions raised in the elaboration and realization of such courses are the basis of the discussion that I present, as a result of my experience as a teacher of Literature in two training programs for indigenous teachers. The advance of indigenous school education is associated with the proliferation of the production of texts written by Indians, many of them
carried out within the framework of a still incipient contact of their authors with written language, the white world, its technology and its values. The discussion will be illustrated by the commentary of two texts produced in the framework of the training courses of the Pró Próndio do Acre Commission in the 1990s. Among the aspects that the reading of these texts causes me to explore, I highlight: (a) the different perception that teachers / writers manifest about the world from contact with the white man, which does not mean however a abandoning traditional and identity perspectives and values; (b) the unavoidable strength
that distinguishes many of these writings in a way that expands and enriches our
notion of poetry itself. In conclusion, I try to raise some questions and proposals
concerning the scope of the poetic and the teaching of literature, both inside and outside the school indigenous. Considering that the commented texts were produced in a space of transit between the culture of oral dominance and written expression, the discussion also covers the reserved treatment, in the area of Letters, to the repertoires of the so-called oral "literature".