O OUTRO LADO DO ESPELHO: representação do índio em livros didáticos

Abstract

This study seeks to analyze the representations of Indians in textbooks used in primary schools, in 4th and 5th grades from 1991 to 2010 by the indigenous communities of Tenetehara/ Guajajara people in southern Maranhão. Examines how the issue is treated in books used for non-indigenous schools in indigenous schools and books written by indigenous teachers produced in 2010, and the context of the training teachers for teaching indians, and how those books still being the main resources for teachers who work on indigenous schools. This study also considers the author's experience, while not native professional who has worked in the field of education with these people in that region for several decades. The study is illuminated by the Theory of Social Representations, inaugurated in 1961 by Serge Moscovici, that supports the theoretical and methodological construction, emphasizing aspects drawn on the textbooks, getting consistency in the way they are perceived in a specific social context. This study shows that the main content within the textbooks, the Indian, is often represented in a romanticized, idealized, impersonal, and far from our reality, describing them as a people of the past, without history and in a fast process of extinction. Above all, this study seeks to discover new insights about the Brazilian Indians examined in the textbooks.