Indigenous Education in Brazil—The Case of the Bare People in Nova Esperança: Transition to Work and Sustainability

Abstract

The paper presents the institutional framework of the Indigenous Schools in Brazil it raises the issues presented by the relationship between school as institution and patterns of indigenous culture transmission, given the complex structure of the indigenous population in Brazil, divided into more than 306 ethnic groups, and the historical intercultural relations established with the European colonizers. The second part describes a specific Indigenous school located in the community of Nova Esperança, whose members belong predominantly to the Baré ethnic group. The village overlooks the Cuieiras River—a tributary of the Rio Negro—and is 80 kilometers (km) away from Manaus, the capital of the State of Amazonas. Nova Esperança is called “Pisasú Sarusawa” in Nheengatu, Ñe’engatu o Ñeengatu, known as the “general language” of the Amazonas. An interview with Joarlison Garrido, the school director, deals with the question of the usefulness of indigenous education in the school-to-work transition. According to Joarlison Garrido, indigenous education can promote community development, employment, and sustainability. This positive result is possible thanks to the special location of Nova Esperança within the Puranga Conquista Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS), managed by the government of the State of Amazonas. In this precise context, indigenous education represents a tool to ensure the new generations of Baré have a successful transition from school to work and an employment, namely through the projects of sustainable development that are foreseen for the area. Moreover, as Joarlison points out, sustainability is currently a global issue: consequently, the experience of Nova Esperança is at the same time local and part of a global trend. The Indigenous schools represent a great potential to develop original pedagogical practices in the field of intercultural education that can impact the transition from school to work not only in Brazil but in various contexts where Indigenous Peoples live. The case of the community of Nova Esperança is an example of this direction.

1. Introduction

The word “indigenous” refers to an emergent, collective, globalizing, and increasingly legally recognized sociopolitical identity resulting from a social movement that became institutionalized around 1980. Two years later, a Working Group on Indigenous Populations was created within the United Nations1, whose main outcome was the formulation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the General Assembly in 2007. The U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues estimates that, currently, around 370 million Indigenous Peoples live in 70 different countries.

Despite extremely diverse histories, cultures, and socio-economic conditions, indigenous populations have all been victims of colonial violence and institutional discrimination for centuries. As a consequence of this common experience, they share similar struggles2, which José Martínez Cobo, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Discrimination against Indigenous Populations, synthetized in 1980: “They (Indigenous Peoples) form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems (see Note 2). In order to transmit their ethnic identity to future generations, Indigenous Peoples must confront school systems, which, being rooted in Western modernity, have pursued an assimilationist goal since colonial times and even committed what the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1998) calls an “epistemicídio”:“destruction of some forms of local knowledge, inferiorization of others, wasting, in the name of colonialist designs, the richness of perspectives present in cultural diversity and in the multifaceted visions of the world that they portray3.” (Santos 1998, p. 208).

The challenge today is to define education patterns and contents that would preserve indigenous traditional cultures and, at the same time, offer indigenous children the tools to live and work in the societies of Western modernity (Santos and Meneses 2009). The paper deals with indigenous education in Brazil, considering both the “education for the Indigenous”—educação escolar indígena—which are education policies addressing the indigenous population; and the “education of the Indigenous—Indigenous education”—educação indígena—which are developed by the indigenous communities, taking place in the villages and in contact with natural environment (Carneiro da Cunha and Cesarino 2016).

Both are based on the principles enshrined in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, according to which Indigenous Peoples have the right to a differentiated and intercultural education, as well as to multilingual and community education -art. 210, §2: Regular primary education will be taught in Portuguese, with indigenous communities also ensuring the use of their mother tongues and their own learning processes (O ensino fundamental regular será ministrado em língua portuguesa, assegurada às comunidades indígenas também a utilização de suas línguas maternas e processos próprios de aprendizagem).

The Federal Ministry of Education is responsible for the national coordination of Indigenous School Education policies (Decree No. 26 of 1991). Indigenous School Education, imparting both non-indigenous and indigenous knowledge, is offered to the indigenous communities by the Federal Ministry of Education through the States’ Education Secretariats (Brazil is a Federal Republic). Moreover, the Federal Ministry of Education officially recognizes the “Indigenous Schools” that are carried out by indigenous communities according to their uses, customs, and traditions in their own villages and territories. These schools enjoy autonomy, both in the use of public resources and in the definition of their pedagogical and curricular projects. Various Indigenous Peoples are dealing with Indigenous Schools, which, respecting the local characteristics and needs, promote community education by involving most community members, not just the children’s parents. Indigenous Schools are called upon to guarantee the transmission of Indigenous peoples’ cultural identity (BRASIL 2008, 2017).

The 1988 Federal Constitution can be considered a milestone in the achievement and guarantee of rights for Indigenous Peoples in Brazil. Since the 1988 Federal Constitution, various laws and directives have implemented the Constitution’s principles and responded to the demands of Indigenous Peoples. Brazil voted in favor of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and of the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2016).

This paper is divided into two parts. The first one presents the institutional framework for Indigenous Schools in Brazil and discusses the issues raised by the relationship between the school, as an institution, and the communities both called to transmit indigenous culture together after centuries of difficult intercultural relations between Indigenous Peoples and European colonizers. Moreover, the complex structure of the Brazilian indigenous population, divided into more than 300 ethnic groups, makes the definition of common education patterns and contents extremely hard.

In the second part, we describe the experience of the Puranga Pisasú (Boa Nova in Nheengatu) Municipal Indigenous School of the community of Nova Esperança, (“Pisas Sarusawa” in Nheengatu), belonging to the Rural Zone District Division—DRE VI. Nova Esperança is located on the Cuieiras River, a tributary of the Rio Negro, 80 kilometers (km) from Manaus, Amazonas. The inhabitants are predominantly Baré people. The school was recognized as an Indigenous School in 2014, through the Law N. 1893/2014, with wording amended by Law N. 1912/2014. It serves the community from kindergarten to ninth grade, with multigrade classes, and high school through distance learning in the evening.

A long interview with the school director, Joarlison Garrido, focuses on how indigenous education can be useful in the transition from school to work, promoting community development, employment, and sustainability at the same time. The fact that the Baré community is located within the Puranga Conquista Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS), managed by the government of the State of Amazonas, contributes to a positive synergy between indigenous education and new development perspectives for the area following sustainable models.

2. Indigenous Population in Brazil: The Impossible Assimilation and the Ethnic Force

According to Brazil’s 2022 Demographic Census, countrywide, 1,693,535 individuals declare themselves indigenous, or 0.83 percent of the nation’s resident population. They are distributed across 4832 municipalities4 and belong to 305 ethnic groups. In the 2010 Census, 896,9175 indigenous people were counted, corresponding to 0.47 percent of the population; in twelve years, the indigenous population increased 88.82 percent. The number of officially delimited indigenous territories rose from 501 in 2010 to 573 in 20226. Two states concentrate 42.51 percent of Brazil’s indigenous population: Amazonas, with 490,854, corresponding to 28.98 percent; and Bahia, with 229,103, or 13.53 percent. Mato Grosso do Sul has the third largest amount (116,346), followed by Pernambuco (106,634) and Roraima (97,320). These five states account for 61.43 percent of the indigenous population. The great majority of the 305 indigenous ethnic groups that survive in Brazil are composed of small groups of dozens of people, some in the hundreds, and a few numbering in the thousands.

The positive demographic dynamics—a real “demographic turnaround”—showing that the indigenous population was not on the brink of disappearing, but was growing, dates to the 1980s. The Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro7 magnificently explained the phenomenon with the processes that have characterized the historical interactions between the Indigenous Peoples and the colonizers: “The integration of Indigenous into the economic fronts that are advancing on them constitutes an inevitable integration, in the sense of forcing them to produce goods or to sell themselves as labor power to obtain goods that become indispensable, such as tools, medicines and some others. But this integration does not mean assimilation” (Ribeiro 2010, p. 26).8

During the 1950s, Darcy Ribeiro started to study the Indigenous Peoples from the anthropological perspective of the “acculturation”, a process essentially leading to their disappearance in Brazilian society through the absorption of the Portuguese language, the Christian religion, and the national culture. (Ribeiro 1979) What he found through his fieldwork was just the opposite: “I saw (…) situations in which Indigenous subjected for centuries to contact and economic, social, and religious pressure, in its most perverse forms, remained Indigenous”9 (Ribeiro 2010, p. 47). Ribeiro discovered the strong resistance performed over the years by the indigenous communities if they had a minimum of conditions to maintain their social relations. Despite being integrated in the regional economy and looking more and more like their “civilized” neighbors, they did not convert to Christian religion, they did not lose their language, and they did not assimilate. Ribeiro explains the indigenous people’s resistance through the concept of the “force of ethnicity”: “The historical continuity through the succession of generations created within the same tradition, the pride of being themselves and the experience of hostility that non-Indigenous have towards them is all what the ethnic group needs to remain.”10 (Ribeiro 2010, p. 49).

Darcy Ribeiro writes that the homogenizing forces of modern society are not as fatal or as dramatically compulsive as it would appear. All over the world, the revitalization of the ethnic minorities is taking place. Brazil is no exception: the revitalization of indigenous identity every year concerns a growing number of people identifying themselves as Indigenous, even when their group has lost the territory or central cultural dimensions as well as the language (Ribeiro 1979).

The anthropologist Viveiros de Castro mentions a process of “re-indianization”: “The 1988 Brazilian Constitution legally (ideologically) interrupted a secular de-indianization project, merely by acknowledging that it had not been completed. And that is how communities distancing themselves from their indigenous roots, began to realize that going back to “being” Indigenous—that is to become Indigenous again, (…)—could be something interesting. Converting, reverting, perverting, or subverting (each to his own), the subjugation device used against them since the Conquest was turned into a subjectivation device—they stopped suffering from their own Indianness and started enjoying it” (Viveiros de Castro 2008, pp. 140–41, quoted by Maia Figueiredo 2009).

According to Ribeiro, even if, currently, Indigenous Peoples do not identify themselves with the national society and do not want to merge into it, they need protection and compensation by the State, which should define public policies corresponding to their demands and support their political autonomy. Giving voice to the Indigenous Peoples, Darcy Ribeiro writes the following: “We’re here. We are the first. We are original inhabitants of these lands. What we need is that you do not to persecute us so much, to give us back ownership of the lands on which we are based. And the right to live, according to our customs.”11 (Ribeiro 2010, p. 79).

3. State Policies for Indigenous People and Indigenous Movement

As Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (2016) writes: “There are cultural policies for the Indigenous and there are cultural policies of the Indigenous. They are not the same thing. And there are still many other cultural policies, nationalist or new age for example, that make use of Indigenous”. (Carneiro da Cunha 2016, p. 9). In practice, the three policies—for the Indigenous, of the Indigenous, and the ones that use the Indigenous—intertwine, producing different effects (Carneiro da Cunha and Cesarino 2016).

The Brazilian historian Oscar Beozzo (1983)12 divides the history of the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and the Brazilian state into two parts: throughout the first part, until the mid-1800s, Indigenous Peoples were coveted as labor and, for this, they were enslaved through various subterfuges. From the mid-1800s, what became of interest was the Indigenous Peoples’ land. A huge spoliation, carried out in the name of the assimilation, then took place13. The first official indigenous bodies, as the Indian Protection Service (SPI), created in 191014, replaced by Funai in 196715, acted at the same time under the premise of protecting, but also of assimilating Indigenous Peoples into national society. School was imposed on Indigenous Peoples as a carrier of an educational project that forced them to abandon their own traditions and their own vision of life, making of them good Christians, subjects of the Empire and, later, citizens of the Republic with a national identity. As Darcy Ribeiro wrote, this type of assimilation, throughout the 1800s and 1900s, was a horrible experience for the Indigenous Peoples, who entered as third- and fourth-class citizens into the society that wanted to assimilate them. Finally, in the 1980s, as with other countries in Latin America, Brazil dropped the assimilationist perspective in favor of a multiculturalist approach.

The change in perspective in Brazilian state policies corresponded to the growth of the indigenous political movement that started in the early 1980s with the foundation of the UNIND (Uniao das Naçoes Indígenas) by a group of young indigenous students in Brasilia, followed by the UNI (União das Nações Indígenas), whose aim was to “promote the Indigenous’ autonomy and auto-determination, reclaim and guarantee the inviolability of their lands, and assist the Indigenous in knowing their rights by drawing and putting into practice cultural and community development projects.”16

The history of the Brazilian indigenous movement is complex and cannot be analyzed here in detail (CEDI 1981). One of the main controversies is related to the relationship between national and local levels, as the social reality of the Indigenous Peoples in Brazil is represented by a profusion of small societies, living relatively independent lives. Darcy Ribeiro writes the following: “We had, originally (…) thousands of ethnic groups, with their language and culture, which, as microethnicities, grew and subdivided, without ever coalescing with each other through the formation of cities or the stratification that would enable them to form political unity.” (Ribeiro 2010, p. 57).

Differently from what happened in other parts of the American continent, where the Europeans faced great civilizations as the Maya, the Aztecs in Mexico, and the Incas in Peru, replacing the dominant classes, in Brazil there was no real “conquest”, as each indigenous people had to be conquered individually”. The Yanomami are suffering now what other Indians suffered five hundred years ago, because no one can make peace in their name and can decide nothing for them.17” (Ribeiro 2010, p. 58) Paradoxically, the cultural and political inability of the Indigenous Peoples to unite in front of the European invasion contributed to their survival.

If the profusion of small societies contributed to saving the Indigenous Peoples from assimilation, it may be an obstacle to forming a united movement today and to implementing common practices—namely, in education policies. Despite the difficulties, the Brazilian indigenous movement succeeded in being united in the fight for the recognition of indigenous territorial rights and in the demand for the right to quality education, adapted to the unique sociocultural and linguistic characteristics of the many different ethnic groups. The right to quality education means the rejection of the assimilationist policies pursued by the education system imposed on Indigenous Peoples from the very beginning of colonization: school should become a space for critical reflection and debate on the living conditions of Indigenous Peoples and a means to access essential information on the “white society”. As Da Silva (2015) writes: “The idea that the introduction of schooling among Indigenous Peoples and the preservation of their linguistic and cultural specificities are not necessarily incompatible, became one of the most important tenets of the indigenous movement in the country. “In their fight, Indigenous Peoples were supported by key sectors of civil society, motivated by the desire for less violent relationships between ethnically differentiated sectors of the population, by the positive perception of Brazil as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country, and by the commitment to building democracy.18

4. From Assimilation to Indigenous Schools (Educacao Escolar Indigena e Educaçao Indigena)

We have seen that, with the 1988 National Constitution, the rights and guarantees of Indigenous Peoples over their territories and the right to formulate their own cultural policies were established. The National Constitution of 1988 defined the frame for the education policies targeting the indigenous people: the right to differentiated, specific, intercultural, and bilingual school education; the recognition of the distinct identities and the right to maintain them; the State duty to safeguard and project the cultural manifestations of the indigenous communities.

The implementation of these rights has been quite a long process, developed through different directives and resolutions, which were finally formalized as multiculturalism in all education services offered to indigenous people (the Indigenous School Education) and the creation of the Indigenous Education or Indigenous School, included in the National Education System, under the authority of the indigenous communities: “In order to guarantee the effective construction of intercultural and bilingual education, the category ‘indigenous school’ shall be officially created within the teaching systems and legally regulated, guaranteeing the autonomy of the indigenous schools, both in the use of public resources and in the definition of their pedagogical and curricular projects. The latter must be elaborated locally, with the effective participation and authority of the indigenous community in all decisions relating to the operation of the school and preferably implemented by indigenous teachers” (Brazil, 2008).19

As mentioned in the Introduction, a distinction must be made between the Indigenous Education carried out by indigenous communities according to their uses, customs, and traditions in the Indigenous Schools; and the Indigenous School Education, which is the way basic education is offered to the indigenous communities by the Federal Ministry of Education through the Education Secretariats of the States, imparting both non-indigenous and indigenous knowledge (see Note 4).20

The Federal Ministry of Education got the responsibility for the general coordination of Indigenous School Education actions as for technical and financial support to States and municipalities: the collaborative regime and the organization of Indigenous Schools distributed in all Brazilian States that have indigenous populations. The need to consult the communities over the implementation of the programs aimed to strengthen sociocultural practices and maternal languages was emphasized: with this aim the National Indigenous Education Committee, with representatives from Indigenous Peoples and non-indigenous civil society, was established by the Interministerial Directive 559/91.

Different resolutions and directives have followed over the years, fixing norms and rules for the creation of the autonomous Indigenous Schools, for their structure and functioning, “within the scope of basic education, (…), recognizing their condition as schools with their own norms and legal system” and “establishing the curricular guidelines for intercultural and bilingual education, aiming at the full appreciation of cultures of Indigenous Peoples and the affirmation and maintenance of their ethnic diversity” (CEB RESOLUTION No. 3, OF NOVEMBER 10, 1999). The Indigenous Schools would be created in response to the demand/on the initiative of the interested community, or with its consent, respecting its forms of representation. The basic elements for the organization, structure, and functioning of the Indigenous Schools are as follows: (a) its location on lands inhabited by Indigenous communities; (b) exclusivity of service to Indigenous communities; (c) teaching provided in the mother tongues of the communities served; (d) auto-organization.

5. Indigenous Schools and Indigenous Education: Main Issues and Challenges

Following the institutional education policies, indigenous communities have gradually assumed the task of building their local schools and developing original curricula, informed by their culture and based on references other than the Western model. According to the 2020 Basic Education School Census, there are 3359 Indigenous Schools in Brazil—a third of them in the state of Amazonas. Most enrollments in indigenous schools are concentrated in the elementary cycle: 166,546. In the medium cycle, the number drops to 26,358. To continue studying, teenagers need to change cities and face the inadequacy of urban schools’ proposals for their reality. Despite issues and challenges—both practical/concrete and epistemological—in respect to the knowledge to transmit, Indigenous Schools represent an important instrument of cultural transmission to new generations.

Many problems concern infrastructure, didactic materials, and personnel. Almost half of the schools (49%) have no sanitary sewage, 30% have no electricity, and 75% have no internet access. Didactic material is also a challenge, given the enormous cultural diversity among the 305 Brazilian Indigenous Peoples, who speak 274 different languages. The Census shows that less than half of the schools (48%) use teaching material written in an indigenous or bilingual language (an indigenous language and Portuguese), despite the majority (74%) teaching classes in indigenous languages.21

Problems also exist in respect to personnel: not all those who work in Indigenous Schools are qualified teachers or have passed a regular exam; few have attended higher education, and some lack basic training. Indigenous teachers training is a difficult issue; since the Law n° 11.645, 10 March 2008, indigenous history and culture are obligatory in the basic and medium level of education, but no obligation is foreseen for higher education institutions that might offer teacher training courses in these disciplines. Many universities and colleges do not offer the disciplines that future teachers in Indigenous Schools should learn. A positive aspect is the emerging of a large contingent of indigenous teachers, dedicated to building a properly indigenous form of schooling. They gather in local associations and regional organizations that host periodic meetings and produce pedagogical documents.

Indigenous Schools also face fundamental epistemological questions concerning the ambiguous relationship between school as an institution and indigenous societies. School is not an indigenous institution; on the contrary, as Paulo Freire (2004) wrote, school has served as a denial of identity, contributing to the disappearance of the Indigenous Peoples’ languages. Historically, school was the instrument of a policy that contributed to the extinction of more than one thousand languages (Freire 2004, p. 23). When schools were implanted in the indigenous communities, their languages, oral tradition, knowledge, and art were discriminated and excluded from the educational program. The role of school was to push indigenous students to forget their cultures and abandon their indigenous individuality.

We have mentioned the concept of “epistimicidio” theorized by Bonaventura Santos. How is it possible, then, to “teach” the indigenous culture at school, given the history of assimilationism—of which school was an instrument? How can the school pass from an instrument of assimilation to an instrument of cultural transmission?

Moreover, school as a vehicle of indigenous education is ambiguous, since the school-institutionalized frame, with its timetables and calendars, comes into conflict with home education and prevents children from participating in hunting, fishing, and agricultural activities, crucial parts of the transmission of the indigenous culture. D’Angelis (1999) bluntly problematizes the presence of schools in indigenous societies. This author asserts that the imposition of the educational model of Western capitalist society on indigenous societies constitutes a form of disqualification of the knowledge produced by these people.

“It seems, therefore, that we propose to escape one prejudice (that the knowledge constructed by Indigenous Peoples is not knowledge) by feeding another one (that indigenous knowledge will be true knowledge if it is taught in—or endorsed by—school). The indigenous community has its own ways of teaching, and it is not proven (nor would it make sense for anyone to try to prove) that school (or school teaching) is the most appropriate, most efficient, safest way to guarantee continuity and deepening of all forms of knowledge”.

(D’Angelis 1999, p. 20)22

Another issue concerns the “heritagization” of the elements of the traditional culture: what heritage do old generations want to transmit to the new ones? As it is known, cultures are not static and, after many years of intercultural exchanges, what indigenous memory can be recovered? What would a “pure” indigenous tradition be if it still exists nowadays? This question must be addressed differently for each indigenous people, some of them being in intercultural exchanges with the European colonizers since the 1600s and the 1700s, others—such as the Yanomami—having a much more recent history of contacts. Another issue raised by the “heritagization” is the articulation between the oral and the written tradition, showing how complex it is for the two education models coexist.

We have said that Brazil is home to a rich diversity of indigenous languages, with approximately 274 recognized within its territory. These languages belong to various linguistic families, some of the major language families being Tupian, Macro-Jê, Arawakan, and Cariban23. Efforts have been made to preserve and revitalize indigenous languages. Bilingual education programs have been implemented to teach indigenous languages alongside Portuguese in Indigenous Schools; this is certainly positive, but it also has ambiguous effects, as Ladeira points out: “literacy of Indigenous Peoples in their vernacular language is, assuming that writing is worth more than spoken, “elevating” indigenous languages. (…) But the indigenous languages in Brazil are originally unwritten, stapled. The adoption of a written regimen for them could result in an even more radical devaluation of a regime of oral transmission that prevails not only in languages, but also in many other fields of knowledge” (Ladeira 2016, p. 435)24.

Traditional education patterns cannot respond to these challenges. Innovative approaches, new curricula and teaching practices, are proposed by different actors in the indigenous movement, such as indigenous teachers, often in association with non-governmental organizations, universities, pastoral agents25. Indigenous education must differ from traditional education; school should be a part of village life and should respect times and ways of transmitting culture according to oral modalities. The appropriation of books by indigenous students should be encouraged, but the transmission of culture should not be exclusively confined to school walls.

While the indigenous movement, teachers, and other actors try to propose a different education model, they also know that indigenous parents are aware that school has the task of preparing their children for the “modern” Western life. Therefore, the Indigenous Schools have the intricate function of balancing the political demands of affirming Indigenous Peoples’ culture with the children’s needs to learn the knowledge of the Western world, as they will have to survive in it. How to find the balance between teaching the knowledge that enables indigenous children to be part of the (Western) Brazilian society in a positive way and transmitting the traditional knowledge and practices that the indigenous communities want to value?

6. Indigenous Knowledge—Saberes Indigenas

With the Resolução CNE/CEB n° 3 of 10 November 199926, the Federal Ministry of Education established the National Guidelines for the Indigenous Schools and, with Art. 5o, provided other measures, referring to the National Curriculum directives at each stage of basic education. The directives consider the specific characteristics of Indigenous Schools, with respect to each ethno-cultural community, the socio-linguistic realities, the specifically indigenous curriculum contents and proper ways of establishing indigenous knowledge and culture, and the participation by the respective communities. According to Art. 8o of the Resolution, the teaching activities at Indigenous Schools will be carried out primarily by indigenous teachers from the respective ethnic group.

More recently, the directives related to teachers’ training in Indigenous Schools have established the basic principles in indigenous culture27. Here are the most important:

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A vision of society that transcends relations between humans and admits diverse “beings” and forces of nature with which they establish relations of cooperation and exchange in order to acquire—and ensure—certain qualities;

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Values and procedures typical of originally oral societies, less marked by profound internal inequalities, more articulated by the obligation of reciprocity between the groups that make them up;

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The specific, culturally formulated notions (therefore variable from one indigenous society to another) of the human person and their attributes, capabilities, and qualities;

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Training of children and young people as an integrated process; despite their numerous particularities, a common characteristic of indigenous societies is that each cognitive and affective experience carries multiple meanings, economic, social, technical, ritual, cosmological (BRASIL 1988).28

According to the last principle, education is marked by rituals of passage, orienting the different stages of life—childhood, youth, and adulthood—in their relationship with the earth, with the natural environment, with the community, with themselves. Here, we meet a crucial aspect of indigenous education: the connection with the territory, as part of the earth, and the group—the community (present and as heritage left by the ancestors). Indigenous education as a way of giving meaning to the world starts from the ancestral heritage of each ethnic group, valorizing the mother tongue, the territory, and the group’s identity. As Borges da Silva (2016) writes: “Indigenous knowledge is related to a social, environmental, cultural context and sustainable practices that involve the entire process of their ancestry, proven by traditional knowledge, by the set of knowledge, by different ways of doing, creating and living, with memories of oral words rescued from generation to generation”. Among the patterns of indigenous education, Borges da Silva introduces “sustainable practices that involve the entire process of their ancestry”29. Sustainability appears as a main principle of indigenous education as indigenous knowledge is based on the respect for biodiversity, embedded in ancient beliefs and mythology (Borges da Silva 2016). The same idea is expressed by Reis (2015): “The constitutive knowledge of indigenous peoples relies on their ability to respect natural life and obtain means of subsistence that do not harm or destroy the environment”.30

The comprehensive principles are articulated according to the specific ethno-cultural nature of each people. Therefore, the affirmation of the ethnic identity, the recovery of the historical memories and traditional knowledge, and the revitalized association between school/society/identity must be in accordance with the societal projects defined autonomously by each indigenous people (Lescano 2016).

In the book, Todo indio na Escola! Parte I: Infancias indigenas e escolarizacao no Brasil (1999–2009). p. 710. ISBN 978 85 99944 34 9, Domingos Nobre (2014) discusses education and indigenous childhood through the re-reading of different theoretical texts, having collected an enormous bibliography made up of all the theses and research conducted in Brazil on indigenous education. He takes as the main example the schooling processes faced by Guarani-Mbya children, but he also analyzes studies on other populations. Based on his work, Domingos Nobre reaches the conclusions that the heterogeneity of experiences in indigenous education in Brazil represents an enormous difficulty in making a deeper critical assessment beyond ethnographic representations. The availability and quality of Indigenous Schools in Brazil varies greatly depending on the region and the specific community.

The same idea is shared by Sobrinho et al. (2017), who highlight how Indigenous Schools cannot be seen as a homogeneous and singular set, since they have a different history of implementation in each community, based on different interests and needs.

7. The Field Work among the Baré People in Nova Esperança —Amazonia

In the second part of the article, I relate the experience of an Indigenous School in the community of Nova Esperança, located 80 (40) kilometers from Manaus on the Cuieiras River, a tributary of the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazonia region. The great majority of the habitants belong to the Bare People.

According to Peterson Medeiros Colares (2018), author of a recent ethnographic study on Nova Esperança, 117 individuals, divided into 37 Bare families and 3 non-Baré families, live in the community (the number has, of course, grown in the last 5 years, reaching around 130). Most of them work in crafts, tourism, fishing, and family farming.

Nova Esperança is involved in a project of “community tourism”, Community-based Tourism (CBT) or Community-based Sustainable Tourism (CBST), a segment of tourism that addresses conservation, community involvement, and leadership, promoted in the frame of the Rio Negro Community-Based Tourism Route (Tucorin), an initiative for more sustainable tourism, which generates economic incentives and values the culture of local communities. The Tucorin program or Roteiro Tucorin (Turismo Comunitário no Rio Negro) is managed by a consortium composed of the Institute of Ecological Research (Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas) (IPE), the ONG Nymuendaju Fundo Vale, USAid, Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of the Environment (Meio-Ambiente), Secretary of Environment of the State of Amazonia (Secretarias de Meio-Ambiente do Estado do Amazonas), and the Municipality of Manaus31.

“Community-Based Tourism arises from three important aspects: the environmentalist ideas promoted from the eighties onwards, in line with the emergence of new expressions such as Sustainable Development; the expansion of tourism in the world, with trips carried out not only in traditional destinations, such as European cities, but in natural areas and peripheral capitalist countries, based on ecotourism; and the opportunity for communities to take over the management of tourists’ visits based on the diversification of their economic activities and reproduction alternatives.”32.

(A.P.M. Morais 2022, p. 14)

In fact, not all forms of tourism have a positive impact on indigenous communities: if not properly regulated, tourism can exploit them through unfair business practices, low wages, and cultural commodification. It can also lead to environmental degradation, unsustainable resource use, and disruption of traditional livelihoods. In some cases, the influx of tourists can even disrupt the social fabric of indigenous communities, erode local customs, and lead to conflicts over land rights and resource access.

When tourism is directly associated with conservation units, the balance between maximizing the quality of the visitors experience and minimizing the negative environmental effects becomes important. What is essential for “community tourism” is the type of management directly under the responsibility of or in strong collaboration with indigenous people. The communities’ engagement in participatory decision-making processes and their control over the tourism development that affects their territories, as it is the case in the community of Nova Esperança, can provide economic opportunities and promote cultural exchange.

I got to know the community of Nova Esperança thanks to Braziliando33, a social impact business “operating in the Amazon region since 2017, where they have been carrying out in-person Voluntourism and Community-Based Tourism (TBC) experiences, with the aim of generating income and opportunities for community members, valuing traditional culture and enabling travelers to transform their worldview by experience a new reality” (Machado de Andrade et al. 2022).

I traveled to Manaus for the first time in July 2021, but, during the pandemic, visiting the Indigenous tribes in Amazonia was not allowed, and consequently, the in-person stays at Nova Esperança were not possible. To ensure the continuity of what had become an important economic resource for the community, Braziliando organized online travel with groups and individuals, mobilizing academic institutions. When the virtual travelers did not speak Portuguese, as University of St Gallen (Switzerland) and University of Colorado, Boulder (USA) students, the Braziliando team organized a consecutive translation into English. Since my anthropology courses at the University of Florence were online, I included the virtual travel to Nova Esperança into the program. Thus, the students were able to take advantage of an interesting experience during the difficult time of the lockdown. On that occasion, while preparing the virtual travel, I had a few meetings online with Joarlison Garrido, the Indigenous School director and community leader, whom I met personally in Manaus during a second trip to Amazonia in June 2022. We had the opportunity to talk broadly about indigenous education and intercultural approaches. Moreover, making an evaluation of the impact of the virtual travel, we discussed the role of internet in the community.

In fact, the virtual trips were possible only thanks to the arrival of the internet and other technologies in indigenous villages. As the school director explained, internet is strongly demanded by the Indigenous Peoples of Amazonia as it can bring numerous positive impacts. It can contribute to health, education, and income generation. A few young people have the possibility to take academic courses and to graduate. Indigenous youth need to be prepared for the university environment and the job market; therefore, digital inclusion is important and necessary to including young indigenous people in academia and the labor market. A positive evaluation of internet was shared by the members of Braziliando.

In January 2023, I was finally able to organize a stay in Nova Esperança and carry out participant observation and a few interviews. Four other visitors were staying at Nova Esperança during my sojourn: a French couple, a young man from Sao Paulo, and a member of the Braziliando association. It is not possible, in this article, to relate the extraordinary experience I had in Nova Esperança and the materials collected (namely in respect to gender relations, family, spiritual life). Here, I first briefly present the main characteristics of the Baré People; secondly, I describe the community of Nova Esperança, its specificities and the importance of education for its members; finally, I report large parts of the interview with Joarlison Garrido, as he clearly develops the meaning of indigenous education and its role to promote the insertion of the Indigenous students into the world of work. In Joarlison’s discourse, preserving the community that ensures the transmission of the indigenous culture and promoting a local sustainable development coincide. The interview suggests that it is possible to fix the balance between the traditional knowledge and the knowledge that is necessary for the new generations bound to live in the modern Brazilian society.

8. The Bare People: Acculturation and Identity

The Rio Negro crosses the northern portion of the Brazilian Amazon, at the border with Colombia and Venezuela. Along its course, Içana-Rio Negro (at the border with Colombia), Médio Rio Negro I, Médio Rio Negro II e Xié, live an indigenous population of around eighty-thousand people from 23 ethnic groups, such as Baniwa, Baré, Desana, Piratapuya, Tariano, Tukano, and Tuyuka. This is the Alto Rio Negro Indigenous Territory (Meira 1991). The Bare mainly occupy a territory formed by the Rio Xie and the upper course of the Rio Negro above the mouth of the Vaupes River. Most of the Baré live in “communities”, as the villages in the region are called, which generally consist of a set of wattle and daub houses built around a large space of clean sand; a chapel (Catholic or Protestant); a small school; and, eventually, a medical post. Some communities, however, have nothing other than housing. The main towns are Cucuí, Vila Nova, and Cué-Cué. There are approximately 140 sites and villages, where around 3200 people live (Meira 1991).

We have already mentioned Darcy Ribeiro’s studies about the revitalization of Indigenous identity, which sees every year a growing number of people identifying themselves as Indigenous, even when their group has lost central cultural dimensions such as the language. “Even when they lose their language and even when what could be called acculturation is completed, that is, even when they become almost indistinguishable from their civilized context, they still maintain their self-identification as indigenous people of a specific group that is their people” (Ribeiro 2010, p. 26)34. This is precisely the case of the Bare, who have been generally described as an “acculturated” Amazonian people whose contact and mixing with other indigenous groups and even with the white people who migrated to the region date back to 1700 (Figueiredo 2009).

Even the “ethnonym “Baré may refer to an acculturation process: according to Figueiredo (…) the origin is uncertain, but the hypothesis go from the name of a great ancient chieftain to the term bale or bare, a derivative of the word bari, white, in contrast with black men or taini, the Bare being considered as civilized indigenous, close to the white people. This second hypothesis would reinforce the idea that the Bare have been in a path of “becoming white”35

Historically, the category of “white” and “indio” in the Rio Negro area is complex because of the assimilation process Indigenous Peoples have gone through; there are Indigenous (“Indios”) that are considered civilized and others that are not. The opposition between “civilized” and “non-civilized” is based on different social constructions and practices: for example—an indicator of being assimilated/civilized is the use of Nheengatu, also known as the “general language”, a simplified form of ancient Tupi, spoken in a large part of Brazil in the first centuries of Portuguese colonization, and which was adapted and widely spread by Jesuit missionaries. With time, Portuguese dominated as the national language, and Nheengatu lost ground. However, it is still widely used in the Rio Negro middle and upper course, including in São Gabriel, and in some of its tributaries, such as the Lower Içana and the Xié River.

The Bare no longer speak their original mother tongue (a language of the Arawak family), but speak Nheengatu and Portuguese instead. Imposed on them by the missionaries in the 1700s, today Nheengatu represents a mark of the Baré cultural identity and a form of resistance to the imposition of Portuguese by the government authorities and the Salesian missionaries during the 1800s and 1900s. “In fact, the Salesians banned indigenous languages from their mission, including Nheengatu and they also discouraged the use of these languages outside the missions as well” (Figueiredo 2009, p. 266).

To draft this part of the article I essentially used the work of the anthropologist Paulo Maia Figueiredo, author of a doctoral thesis titled Unbalancing the conventional: aesthetics and ritual with the Baré of the upper Rio Negro (AM) (Desequilibrando o convencional: estética e ritual com os Baré do alto rio Negro (AM). Figueiredo explains how the Baré people were made “invisible” over a long period of time, as they were considered to be in the path towards a status of “civilized” to be finally incorporated, even partially or to their detriment, by the Brazilian population (Figueiredo 2009, p. 273).

Maia Figueiredo quotes Curt Nimuendajú ([1927] 1982), author of a well-known report for the Indian Protection Service (SPI) on the upper Rio Negro region, and Eduardo Galvão’s (1960), article on the “acculturation” on the upper Rio Negro; they both excluded the Baré from the statistics of the region’s indigenous population. “The Baré were placed in an undefined and generic category of “caboclos” and/or “civilized”, which denoted an uncomfortable position between the indigenous and white population of the region.” (Figueiredo 2009, p. 53). Or, the de-Indianization process designed by the Brazilian State, by missionaries and anthropologists (and, to a lesser extent, by the Indigenous Peoples themselves), for the Rio Negro region ended up not being completed as expected. Nimuendajú and Galvão’s reports are contradicted by the fact that the Baré population, since the 1970s, has continued to grow, contrary to previous estimates. In 2006, in the Database of the Indigenous Peoples Program in Brazil, from the Instituto Socioambiental, the Baré population in Brazilian territory was estimated at 10,275 (DSEI-FOIRN-Lev SGC2004 data). In 2014, the Siasi/Sesai data count 11.472 Baré in the state of Amazonas (SIASI 2014).36 In the same years, the Baré leaders began to publicly revendicate their Indianness.

The fact that the Baré went from being “extinct” in the 1960s to having a very significant population in 2006 is related to the processes described by Darcy Ribeiro (the ethnic force) and Viveiros de Castro (recovering the Indianness) (Viveiros de Castro 1983, 2008). In the case of the Baré, it was necessary to re-elaborate the historical experience of intercultural exchanges with the colonizers, marked by violence and exploitation, and to incorporate it in the Baré culture as not contradictory with the self-recognition of being Indigenous. According to the anthropologist Maia Figueiredo, the Baré, as the offspring of miscegenation with “civilized” people (Meira 1997), seen as Indigenous people who have transformed themselves into white people, can be understood within a more generalized process of differentiation within an intense and ancient inter-ethnic relationship context. This process did not lead to assimilation, but remains a truly indigenous process, an innovation of the conventional Amerindian space, retaining many of their characteristics (Kelly 2005). “The always unfinished “turning white” process that the Bare are engaged in, instead of producing an identity with the whites, produces a double difference—both from other Indigenous Peoples in the region and from the whites, which leads to a “differentiated identification” (Figueiredo 2009, pp. 273–74).

Through the study of rituals, Figueiredo came to the conclusion that Shamanism and Catholicism are two complementary aspects of the sociality and religiosity of the current Baré; however, they are not articulated in a single universe, but are seen as distinct domains (although, it is possible to trace intersections between them). Shamanism seems to be taken as a different practice and, in a certain way, autonomous in relation to Catholic religiosity. While in some Baré communities, the saints’ festivals seem to have completely “replaced” the old rituals, in other communities, rituals of shamanic origin and those of Catholic origin continue to be carried out, indicating alternating forms of sociality (Figueiredo 2009, p. 256).

9. Nova Esperança, the Community and the School

Nova Esperança is not situated in the Alto Rio Negro Indigenous Territory. The Cuieiras River is not the traditional area of settlement of the Baré. The Cuieiras River is a tributary of the Rio Negro, where it enters from the left (east) upstream from the Anavilhanas archipelago region. It defines the north boundary of the Rio Negro State Park South Section. The north bank of the river is in the Rio Negro Left Bank Environmental Protection Area, a 611,008 hectares (1,509,830 acres) sustainable-use conservation area created in 199537. During the second half of the 1900s, a few indigenous families from the middle Solimões River and the upper Rio Negro settled in areas on the banks of the Cuieiras and founded seven ethnically diverse communities, including the Cocama, Baniwa, Tucano, Ticuna, Mura, Baré, Sateré-Mawé, and Carapana peoples.

Specifically, on the Cuieiras River, there are six existing communities: Três Unidos, São Sebastião do Cuieiras, Nova Kanaã, Nova Esperança, Boa Esperança, and Barreirinha, which, according to Cardoso (2010), totaled, at the time, 140 families, including indigenous and non-indigenous. Nova Esperança is part of the indigenous and riverside communities within the Puranga Conquista Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS Puranga Conquista). The RDS was created in 2014, based on state law no. 4015/2014, and is approximately 76,936 hectares. According to data from the Instituto Socioambiental (2014), the RDS was created from areas of the Rio Negro Environmental Protection Area (APA) and Rio Negro State Park. The region is part of the Rio Negro Mosaic of Protected Areas, due to its great potential for biodiversity conservation.

The community of Nova Esperança was formed in the 1980s. The decision of migrating from the area of Santa Isabel, more precisely the island of Maricota38, was taken by the “patriarch”—father, grandfather, and great grandfather—of many of the present inhabitants; Seu Jonas married Dona Arlete with the aim of bringing the family clan, and the new generations, closer to education and health services. It turns out that, shortly before they decided to come, there were two deaths in the family, associated with the lack of health care, a determining factor for migration (Medeiros Colares 2018). They came to seek proximity to an urban center, where they could seek support from public bodies when they needed it. They found temporary residence on the slopes of the Cuieiras River.

In 1991, at the invitation of Seu Jonas, Seu José Pancrácio, his wife, Dona Sonia and three children, as well as other relatives, also arrived, totaling 17 people. What was initially a visit ended up becoming a stay, also because of a meeting with a couple of Baré origin—Seu Getúlio, a retired military officer, and Dona Domitila, a retired teacher, who owned a large piece of land. Seu Getulio allowed the migrating Bare people to settle on his land. “At the same time, Getúlio observes that the children are not studying, and decides, on his own, to set up and finance a school. The school begins its activities inside Seu Getúlio’s house, with teaching materials and school meals paid for by them. There was no public school in Cuieiras at that time, according to reports from residents of Nova Esperança. From then on, the history of the school and the community become intertwined. Residents often say that the school came before the community39” (Medeiros Colares 2018, p. 69).

Initially, the school was not indigenous, but regular. There was a time when, after Seu Getúlio’s intervention, the school management had to be taken over by the education department of the municipality of Novo Airão. Later, the school was incorporated into the Municipal Education Secretariat of the municipality of Manaus (SEMED/Manaus) and was recognized as an Indigenous School in 2014. According to the interviews with Nova Esperança residents, Seu Getulio, now very old and sick, was extremely interested in promoting education among the Baré, as he had himself studied to become engineer during his military career. The importance of academic study was finally shared by the patriarch of the community; one of the children, Joarlison—now director of the school—was sent to University. In the youngest generation, a few are doing graduate studies.

This is how Peterson Medeiros Colares (2018) describes the school building in Nova Esperança: “On the left, on grassy ground, is the Municipal Indigenous School Puranga Pisasú—EIMPP, or Boa Nova, in Portuguese. All in masonry, painted in white and with clay tiles. It has three U-shaped mini pavilions, the largest of which contains ten classrooms, and the two lateral ones, respectively, the kitchen, pantry and food storage, and the administrative area. In the center, a kind of semi-covered square was created, which also serves as communication between the three pavilions. Flanking the school is the vegetable garden, where chives, coriander and chicory plants are grown. On the left edge, a small wooden house that houses the generator, and further on some community houses.” (Medeiros Colares 2018, p. 70)40.

10. Nova Esperança: “Community Tourism”, Handcraft, and Protection of the Environment

As mentioned, in 1995, the north bank of the Cuieiras River became part of the Rio Negro Left Bank Environmental Protection Area. The community of Nova Esperança is now located within the Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS) Puranga Conquista, managed by the government of the State of Amazonas. There is a delimitation of the Conservation Unit, but there is no demarcation of it as indigenous land. Moreover, the community is in a central region of the Rio Negro Community-Based Tourism Route (Tucorin), an initiative for more sustainable tourism, which generates economic incentives and values the culture of local communities. During conventional tourism activities, cruise ships take visitors to the communities; this practice lasted until 2010 in Nova Esperança and continues to be the norm elsewhere. Visitors disembark, enjoy indigenous dances, go on a tour, and buy some handicrafts. The organization of this ready-made tourist package needs no or little participation from the indigenous communities. From 2010 onwards, Nova Esperança began to experiment with “community tourism”, based on a proposal presented by the Institute for Ecological Research (IPE), an NGO based in São Paulo that operates in the Amazonia region, in partnership with the State Secretariat for the Environment of Amazonas. Two researchers, Proença and Netto (2022) lived in Nova Esperança for two consecutive months, doing field work to analyze how tourism models socio-culturally impact the community. A total of 21 semi-structured interviews, socioeconomic questionnaires, and participatory observation were carried out41. The outcomes of the field work, published in an article, Tourism in indigenous territories: development and sociocultural impact in the Nova Esperança Indigenous Community “Pisasú Sarusawa” (Rio Cuieiras—Amazonas) (Proença and Netto 2022), show that the tourism model in Nova Esperança passed from the practice of just receiving tourists and waiting for them to buy local handicrafts, to an internal management model that enabled indigenous people to appropriate the flow of tourists, to commercialize the handicrafts, the hosting and to develop other technical and financial operations. Moreover, through community tourism, tourists can learn about and experience the day-to-day lives of the riverside populations and allocate their resources directly to the communities, without intermediaries. Due to its location, very close to Manaus, Nova Esperança can easily receive visitors who can be hosted in the house of a family. The hosting is—so far—limited to four rooms.

As Proença and Netto (2022) observed, unlike the tourism practiced previously, tourist activity in Nova Esperança is currently organized in a way that does not harm the daily routines of its residents. With the new modality, all tourism activities now have collective community participation in planning and execution. “The people of the community stopped using their indigenous clothing and dances for this purpose and focused on building tourism based on the daily life of the community, on establishing closer relationships between visitors and those visited, and which highlights the Baré culture in its cuisine., language and hospitality. The planning involved everything from welcoming tourists to determining visiting routes at specific points in the community.” (see Note 41). Seven main sociocultural impacts were identified as follows: economic benefits; pride; relationship with intermediary agents; collective lifestyle; commercialization of culture; keeping traditions and customs; and valuing beliefs. The positive point of view of the two investigators is shared by the members of the community with whom I have spoken during my stay and with the school director whose interview is reported here. People from the community participate as well in the deliberative Council of the Sustainable Development Reserve42, one of the issues discussed being tourism. This council includes participants from higher education institutions, the State, and community leaders in the region.

Besides community tourism, Nova Esperança represents an iconographic reference for crafts; in 2016, the Instituto de Pesquisa Ecologica43 (IPÊ) and Instituto C&A, supporting inclusive fashion as a way to promote change44, in partnership with the State Secretariat for the Environment (SEMA) and USAID, financed the construction of the “House of Knowledge”, Uka Yayumbué Baiakù (UKA), a cultural center that benefits the local community and surrounding populations, hosting a library and organizing activities to strengthen traditions. The bilingual Indigenous School (Portuguese and nheengatu) Escola Municipal Indígena Puranga Pisasú—EIMPP, ou Boa Nova, is at the crossroad of these various projects, including an ecological one, the chelonian conservation45: “Chelonians represent an important resource in the Amazon, either as a source of protein at the base of the food chain of aquatic and transition ecosystems, or in the dispersion of seeds of plants from floodplains and flooded forests. The consumption and predatory exploitation of their meat and eggs by local populations has been, and still is, one of the main threats to these animals. Community-based conservation projects allied to official protection programs have been restoring populations of chelonians of the genus Podocnemis throughout the Amazon since 1974”.

Community tourism, crafts, and chelonian conservation are developed with focus on socio-biodiversity, to strengthen and empower the community to value fair work, indigenous education, and sustainability.

11. The Interview with Joarlison Garrido, Director of the Indigenous School at Nova Esperança

The Puranga Pisasú Municipal Indigenous School is linked to the Municipal Department of Education of Manaus, with administrative zoning in DRZ-VII, a sub-unit for the management of geographical areas of constituency. DRZ-VII provides full support and monitoring of the school’s didactic–pedagogical routine in relation to the national curriculum. The part of diversified content, specific to indigenous education, is the responsibility of the Indigenous School Education Management—GEEI.

The school offers all stages of Basic Education. In Elementary School, there are 68 students enrolled under the coordination of SEMED Manaus, in the multigrade modality. In the morning, the pedagogical block serves grades 1 to 5; In the afternoon, Early Childhood Education and the 6th to 9th grade classes. In high school, there is a class with 22 third-year students studying, taking place at the SEDUC Media Center in the evening. The staff is made up of four permanent teachers (one of whom is the director); two from the Itinerant Project, who work on a modulated basis, also serving other schools; and two general services, a lunch lady and a speedboat driver. Of these, only one general service agent and one itinerant teacher are not indigenous.

The interview with Joarlison took place at the school, in the semi-covered square at the center, which also serves as communication between the three pavilions. The interview was organized around four questions: (a) the meaning of educaçao indigena and the relationship with the school education; (b) the transition from school to work; (c) how to create jobs in the community; (d) the relationship between the community activities and the market.

In respect to indigenous education, Joarlison focuses on the intercultural approach and the intertwining of two kinds of knowledge touching different fields; for example, fishing and hunting are important traditional activities for indigenous communities: “Indigenous education happens in the social context of the children: learning to fish, to hunt, to plant, to make their own fishing instruments, to know the right time for harvesting crops, to intercept natural phenomena, to communicate with the forest through the sounds and the animals. This type of awareness is not provided by the “official” school, it is in the everyday context, outside the school’s walls”. In respect to what the school provides: “The school mediates the conditions of knowledge, in the school you have the more scientific side of the Academy: the field of mathematics or geography, the specific areas of knowledge. Or these knowledges meet the previous knowledge of the Baré people, as indigenous people see mathematics, geography, science … In the mission of our school, both knowledges must be intertwined. This is where the famous concept of intercultural education theory arises because it is necessary to know how to acquire knowledge of the societies that are not indigenous, but you also need to know the basic knowledge of your people in all these areas. For example, we have older people in the village who don’t need a clock to know the time and do calculations using their own guideline. We have people here in the village who know how to interpret the weather: they know that it will rain tomorrow… they are natural meteorologists. This is the knowledge that needs to be intertwined and how do we pass on this knowledge”.

Joarlison is fully aware of the complexity of the pedagogical processes: “Academic knowledge is passed on by teachers in classrooms, contextualizing it with everyday knowledge, the knowledge of the people. It’s a giant complexity: the combination of two types of knowledge is interculturality”.46

The following question concerned how the intercultural approach could support the young students to enter the labor market. Here, the arguments question the predominance of employment as a goal of the education systems, neglecting the education to human values: “In Brazil, nowadays, schools are mainly concerned with the professional part in education, preparing students for the job market. This is good up to a certain point, because today we see ourselves that there is a loss of values. We don’t have a school that prepares young people for life. If you end up losing the moral values of the people this is negative also for your work: to be a good professional you need to have empathy, to be supportive, to have collectivity, to need to help your friends when they need it. This understanding of the interiorization of the human being is as if it were the initial stage of the individual’s formation and the young person keeps this in their structure. If he/she succeeds, he/she will be a great professional in the profession that he/she wants to make. On the contrary, we see young teenagers getting lost in bad behaviors, in drugs… losing themselves and losing the essence of the human being …

We worked on this at school, we tell the young persons … you never have to forget your people knowledge, your people customs … they are in your blood. Ah, when they have obtained this awareness, we can see that we are preparing them for life, life outside and life inside. We think for their future life. Many want to go away, many want to stay here, the majority want to stay here in the community … Here we must give dignity, give sustainable work. They can go to the city to be an industrialist to work in the factory, but here we have also our factory of traditional Crafts and Artisanal Work, education, plantations …

School must prepare to leave and to stay too. Let leaving be an option and not an obligation. Let each of them, after this maturation process, decide what is best for them.”

Joarlison has already introduced the topic of their activities and the opportunities that have been developed in the community of Nova Esperança. Now he details them, and, again, he starts from a specific indigenous approach, expressing gratitude to Mother Earth. “Nature—the mother nature—offers several possibilities for the people to generate work in the environment where we are. Here comes the importance of the academy. When I left I had a closed view. When I returned to the community, having studied pedagogy, my vision had expanded like this (he makes a gesture of opening) and I managed to help my people in the elaboration of the societal project.

There are different ways of producing income that also help the environment … an example, the people who work in the traditional Crafts and Artisanal Work earn more than somebody who has an employment in Manaus … and starts at six in the morning and ends at five in the afternoon. The people who do the artisanal work here have dignity and have also a social life. In a factory or in a store in Manaus, you have no autonomy in your timetable. And for a poor salary. They work, they don’t earn enough, they get home superstressed. Here you have no rigid timetable. You can interrupt your work, go fishing and go back to work when you caught your fish … this is the quality of life. What is better?”

In the last part of the interview, the questions concerned the reasons why the products made by the traditional crafts and artisanal work are successful in the market and allow many people in the community to live by this income. Indigenous peoples have rich traditional craftsmanship skills, producing handicrafts such as pottery, basketry, weaving, wood carving, and jewelry, but not all the communities succeed in reaching global markets as some wood sculptures produced by the Baré of Nova Esperança that are sold all over Brazil in different shops and are presented in International Fairs. Joarlison links the success of their products with the principle of Sustainable Forestry and also of Non-timber Forest Products (used for jewelry for example) through sustainable practices and their knowledge of the ecosystem: “We are in a region that gives possibilities and we are constantly experimenting these possibilities. What works, what can be improved. The craftsmanship is at an advanced stage. Today we have the market: our production capacity is lower than market demand. It wasn’t like that since the beginning. Because we went through a process of maturation … all our crafts are products from the forest … they are forest products, but we don’t need to deforest…others deforest, but we don’t need it … here comes the question of mentality. In the forest there are many trees. There comes knowledge that does not come from academia: the quality of wood. This one is good, it has a nice color, it lasts for a long time. The selection of raw materials is the result of the people’s knowledge, so here you go … selecting this and not that. Here comes the technique; it comes as a process of taking what is found in the forest … what falls down naturally … and our craftsmanship gives it new life … for everyday use. There are several functions for our products—decorative, domestic … and so the market embraces us because we try to show the market that we follow the principle of sustainability with this practice. We have shown that using only what has fallen into the forest due to natural events, we make quality crafts and we are maintaining our forest and that way we can also develop other activities, thanks to our knowledge of the forest. Another tourist activity is hiking in the forest for tourists.”

Joarlison analyzes why and how the market valorized their products, a valorization which led them to be sold by large distribution chains and present at various fairs. “It’s an important question. It has to do with the fact that we transmit the principle of trust to us—about the sustainability of our products. Today the world talks about sustainable development, everyone talks about sustainability. What we see a lot is the absence of public politicians to promote sustainability. That’s why the government works from theory to practice. We do the opposite. We work from practice to theory. We work on sustainability in practice. We show everybody that we walk with our legs. We focus on the practice of sustainability. This is a mentality that when people from outside visit Nova Esperança, they are able to see … they can see how we practice sustainability. They can observe that our products were sustainable … This is the added value of our products: we follow the principles of sustainability. This happened already ten years ago … we followed the principle of sustainability and our products started to have this added value … people could observe a quality product that also has an added value … No need to kill trees, economically viable, ecologically correct and socially fair. It is important to understand these principles … they are the added values to the product you are purchasing”. Here, another topic is introduced: the capacity of the indigenous population to present their products, as many indigenous people have excellent products, but when it comes to presenting them to the market, the added value is unknown. “It is a question of mentality and of being strategic. You are sending messages through your product. You don’t just need to sell, you need to talk. What is your message to the outside world? That’s where the importance of the academy comes into play in our training because when I left here my vision was small, the academy did that … opened up … contributing to projects. Our crafts—fish sculptures, jewels … is an attraction, but we can work tourism, trails, animal observatories … One of the good things of community tourism is that… it’s bringing people who come here out of their stereotypical view of Indigenous and into a different view. Anyone who arrives can see that the Indigenous himself is developing his technological techniques to improve his life. What is the ingredient: combining academic training with community work … the academy allows to see the possibilities … then you develop them working together with the community.”

12. Conclusions

The 1988 Brazilian Constitution recognizes and guarantees the right of Indigenous Peoples to their cultural identities, languages, and traditional territories. It also affirms the responsibility of the State to provide education that respects and promotes indigenous values. The recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples is not questioned anymore. This last April, for the first time in the country’s history, the President of the Amnesty Commission for reparations of crimes committed during the military dictatorship has extended an apology to indigenous populations47.

Moreover, defending indigenous knowledge means supporting a type of education that values ancestralism and social, cultural, and linguistic diversity (Brand 2011a, 2011b)48. Indigenous knowledge is at the core of Brazilian culture. Indigenous Schools are a main instrument for defending indigenous knowledge. However, as we have seen, their quality and availability often vary significantly. Some communities have long-established schools with well-trained indigenous teachers and bilingual education programs, while others have limited access to education and face cultural assimilation pressures. Moreover, given the context surrounding indigenous communities, indigenous schools should provide a type of education that combines elements of indigenous culture and knowledge with formal education standards in order to allow indigenous children to find their way in Brazilian society.

Most indigenous communities have been immerged in intercultural relationships with the colonial and State society for centuries, as it happened to the Baré. They have kept their identity, refusing assimilation through this “force of the ethnicity “that Darcy Ribeiro clearly analyzed, but they have constantly readapted their cultural patterns—as the case of the use of Nheengatu shows. The ability to keep an indigenous identity while experiencing constant intercultural exchanges with the “whites” appears central to the historical experience of the Baré.

This ability seems to characterize the community of Nova Esperanca and the experience of their Indigenous School through the idea of an intercultural approach that intertwines two types of knowledge. Fully aware of the necessity of combining these two knowledge, they want to be autonomous in the management of this process. They are aware, as Joarlison Garrido clearly states, that their customs and traditions are perpetuated and updated in their own education processes, which precede school, and which persist even after centuries of violence and usurpation. However, they also need a school—as institution and physical place—not for them, but of them—theirs.

In the wake of the self-determination and indigenous rights movements that, from the 1970s onwards, began to question and fight for the replacement of the integrationist educational model with an interculturalist one, indigenous leaders understand that autonomy in administrative and pedagogical management is as important as the presence of the school itself. In the case of Nova Esperança, the school emerged as a necessity even before the village was founded! And the occupation and consolidation of their presence in the Cuieiras river region brought with it the fight for the right to education (Medeiros Colares 2018).

The school has become part of the community. The residents are proud of their school, which was the first on the Cuieiras River and was born from the struggle and commitment of indigenous residents. The current teachers are former students of this school. This sense of belonging is always linked to a desire to make school a space for building an ethnic identity, the result of this intercultural synthesis, as it is confirmed by the field work done by49 Medeiros Colares (2018).

Questioned about the students’ transition from school to work, Joarlison presents the traditional people’s knowledge as holistic way, combining the education to humanity—neglected by a school system too oriented to the labor market, with the technical aspects. The academic knowledge is necessary as it allows a full understanding of the “white” society. However, the aim for obtaining an academic knowledge is not just the entrance into the labor “market” of the whites but also acquiring instruments to better answer to the community needs, offering the new generations opportunities at a local level. Joarlison has undergone formal schooling and gives value to scientific knowledge, but he does not see it as superior knowledge: “We are preparing them for life, life outside and life inside. Many want to go, many want to stay here. The school has to prepare to leave and to stay too. Let leaving be an option and not an obligation. Let each of them, after this maturation process, decide what is best for them”50

Indigenous education represents a tool for ensuring the new generations of Bare have a successful passage from school to work. The contents proposed by the Indigenous School fit into the projects of sustainable development that are foreseen for the area, thanks also to the location in the Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS) Puranga Conquista, managed by the government of the State of Amazonas, and in a central region of the Rio Negro Community-Based Tourism Route (Tucorin), an initiative for more sustainable tourism. However, as Joarlison points out, sustainability is currently a global issue; consequently, the experience of Nova Esperança is at the same time local and part of a global trend.

Indigenous Schools represent a great potential to develop original pedagogical practices in the field of intercultural and sustainable education, focusing on environment protection that can impact the transition from school to work not only in Brazil but in different contexts where Indigenous Peoples live. The case of the community of Nova Esperança is an example going in this direction.