Being an indigenous child: protagonism and the production of meaning from the village to the urban school space

Abstract

This work is about studies with indigenous children in an urban school context, which  have shown a still timid growth in view of the size of the research field involving indigenous peoples. In this sense, the text that results from a master's research aims to dialogue about the presence of indigenous students in urban schools in the municipality of Campo Novo do Parecis (MT) and about the actions and pedagogical practices developed by the urban school community. The aim is to promote their inclusion, based on theoretical reflections from the anthropological field of children and ethnographic research on post-colonial theories. Data were constructed through document analysis of the Pedagogical Political Project (PPP), semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and reports produced in the field notebook, concomitantly and after observations in the research field. In the end, it was possible to observe that indigenous children face challenges in interacting mainly due to linguistic differences, culminating in distancing between them and the urban school community. Furthermore, the tensions in this space lead them to create strategies to co/exist. Even in the face of such a challenge and attempts to silence them, they reaffirm their identity, however, they still need to assimilate and adapt to the ethnocentric school.