Raimunda Marques do Nascimento's reading and writing practices in Tremembé Differentiated Indigenous Education

Abstract

School education has been imposed on indigenous peoples since the beginning of Brazilian colonisation as a form of acculturation. This research focuses on the life story of the protagonist of Differentiated Indigenous Education in the state of Ceará, Raimunda Marques do Nascimento, of the Tremembé ethnic group. She is an educator whose life trajectory has been marked by her activism and who, in 1991, founded the first Differentiated Indigenous School in the state. The objective is to describe the educational practices carried out by Raimundinha at the interface with the social, cultural and political context of indigenous education in Ceará. The methodology adopted was Hybrid Oral History. The data collection consisted of oral narratives that were recorded, textualised and validated by the interviewees (indigenous and non-indigenous).

Raimundinha Marques was found to have developed an innovative practice, motivated by the negative experiences she had had in non-indigenous schools. She founded the Alegria do Mar school in the village of Praia de Almofala, in the municipality of Itarema, Ceará. His educational practices valued indigenous cultural knowledge and focused not only on the processes of reading and writing, but also on the transmission of his people's culture, with an emphasis on the Torém, the sacred ritual of the Tremembé people. It can be concluded that Raimunda's reading and writing practice was different from conventional education, leaving an educational legacy for the indigenous peoples of the state of Ceará.