Indigenous teachers’ education (development): the right to language as political agency

Abstract

Indigenous teachers’ education represented – and still represents – the possibility of establishment of the right to distinction to indigenous peoples and to education in their mother tongues, recognized in the 1988’s Constitution. In this study, developed from a documental and bibliographical perspective, the main goal is to analyze two different processes of indigenous teacher development, in a secondary school level, in Santa Catarina, concerning the relationship that they establish with bilingual teaching projects in the context of the indigenous education. Although in any moment of such history indigenous languages were used as means to culturally reach these peoples in order to integrate them to the Brazilian national education system, nowadays these languages represent empowerment for these groups. In this sense, teachers’ education can trigger an action that values linguistic diversity.