Literacy in Indigenous Context: An Analysis of the Textbook Xikrín Do Cateté Nhõ Pi’ôk Mari Mokrai Kadjy Na Jà

Abstract

This article makes some reflections on the textbook XIKRÍN DO CATETÉ NHÕ PI’ÔK MARI MOKRAI KADJY NA JÀ. The book was made by two indigenous teachers and researchers from the community itself together with a Professor at the Faculty of Letters and Language at the Federal University of the South and Southeast of Pará (UNIFESSPA). This article aims to contextualize and analyze the literacy proposal developed for the Xikrín do Cateté children, who are monolingual in the Xikrín language, belonging to the Jê family, Macro-Jê stock. For this analysis, we used notes on the construction of the book according to Costa et al. (2020), Magda Soares’s literacy theory (2010) and Pimentel da Silva’s Intercultural and Intracultural literacy theory (2012). As it is a pioneering teaching material, designed and developed by the community agents themselves, the book already constitutes an act of resistance to assimilationist school education, enabling the maintenance of the language and aspects of traditional culture, which have been made invisible in the model of school education in force in schools of the village.