The brazilian indian identity though images from history textbook

Abstract

This paper analyzes the identity assigned and tied to the Brazilian Indian through images - illustrations, photographs and paintings - in the collection of History textbooks by the author Alfredo Boulos Júnior, adopted in the Textbook National Program (Programa Nacional do Livro Didático (PNLD)) of 2018 to high school. We aim to answer the following questions: How is the Brazilian Indian represented in the textbooks through images? What/Which identity/ies is/are possible to observe from those images? The choice of the collection above mentioned is justified by the fact that it is the most taken by the PNLD of 2018, according to the statistic data provided by National Education Fund (Fundo Nacional de Educação (FNDE)), as well as it is during the school teaching that the concept of the Indian is built, which is presented, mainly through the textbook (CHOPPIN, 2004). The present study used the concept of identity from Stuart Hall (2006), the concept of textbook by Egil Borre Johnsen (1996) and Allain Chopin (2004), and the questioning of image by Peter Burke (2004). We observed that in every image of that collection, except one, the Indian is presented wearing a headdress, with no clothes in the upper limbs and with the body painted. In this context, the iconographies are generic, presenting the Indian ethnicities as if they shared of the same identification and culture. Therefore, in the collection História, Sociedade e Cidadania (History, Society & Citizenry), the images of the Indian do not represent their complexity, highlighting identity elements that consider the "genuine Indian", without interferences of other cultures, as the originator of Brazilian nation, building and preserving a national identity, nationality, culture and ideology.