Territorial learning and childcare practices: exploring relations between territory and care in the intercultural training of Indigenous educators in Brazil

ABSTRACT

The article discusses Indigenous caring relations in everyday practices involving children, in which co-learning approaches, as well as peer-to-peer learning processes, are grounded in territory. We revisit a set of learning encounters that unfolded as part of the Intercultural Training Programme for Indigenous Educators in Southeast Brazil. The course is part of the Minas Gerais Federal University’s (UFMG) Faculty of Education where, since 2006, it has trained and qualified Indigenous teachers to deliver Primary and Secondary education. In the text we argue in favour of the ‘school for many’, highlighting the pedagogical possibilities that emerge from the course’s ethnographic focus and, more specifically, from two care-taking learning scenarios with and among children. The records of these activities allow us to envision an educational agenda that includes such topics, respecting and dialoguing with Indigenous cosmologies and traditions; one that assumes this dialogue to be a fundamental part of Indigenous peoples’ resistance and respect for life.

KEYWORDS:

• Territorial learning
• Indigenous children
• childcare
• Indigenous education
• Indigenous teachers training

Acknowledgements

We thank the FIEI Indigenous students and their communities, particularly Erilsa Pataxó and Alberto Guarani for allowing us to share their personal experiences.

This ethnography integrates the research ‘Born Indigenous? Knowledge and practices of pregnancy, labor and birth’ approved by UFMG Research Ethics Committee (number 55725216.5.0000.5149).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. ‘Ajuntamentos’, word used to refer a group of people gathered for a common work task or activity.

2. Alberto Álvares Guarani (2015) – A Procura de Aratu, Nhamandu Produções. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTdX5AHmHiw.

3. See Indigenous Rights in the Constitution of Federative Republic of Brazil, 1988: http://portal.mec.gov.br/sesu/arquivos/pdf/leis1.pdf

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico.

Notes on contributors

Ana Maria R. Gomes

Ana Maria R. Gomes is a Professor at the Faculty of Education, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of Bologna (1996); and has had postdoctoral positions in the PhD Program in Social Anthropology at the National Museum (PPGAS/MN-UFRJ, Brazil) in 2007-2008 and in the Department of Anthropology at St. Andrews University (Scotland) in 2017. She has experience in the field of Anthropology and Education, working mainly on the following topics: Indigenous education, culture and schooling, learning and culture, ecology of practices and cosmopolitics.

Érica Dumont-Pena

Érica Dumont-Pena is a Reader at the Department of Maternal-Child Nursing and Public Health of Federal University of Minas Gerais. She is a qualified Nurse (UFVJM) and had a Masters and PhD in Education from the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). She coordinates the postgraduate course in Obstetric Nursing at UFMG and the Professional Master's in Education at UFMG (PROMESTRE). She has experience in research in the anthropology of health and childhood and education, with emphasis on the sub-themes: early childhood education, care and social markers of gender, class and race-ethnicity.