Educação e religiosidade na reserva indígena de Dourados/MT (1929-1969): práticas, representações e apropriações

Abstract

This research is part of the History of Education, Memory, and Society line of the Postgraduate Program in Education (Master's and Doctorate) at the Federal University of Grande Dourados and, more specifically, the research on the History of Education for indigenous people. The object of the research is the education practices used in the Mission School (called General Rondon Primary School) and in the Post School (called Francisco Ibiapina School), as well as the non-school and religious practices inserted in the Dourados Indigenous Reserve (RID), between the years 1929 and 1969. Such a selection is associated with periods that marked the History of Education directed to the indigenous people of the Kaiowá, Guarani, and Terena ethnicities. The initial one (1929) is marked by the establishment of the Caiuá Evangelical Mission (MEC) in the Reserve and also by the teaching experiences initiated in the Mission School and the Post School; and the final one (1969), by changes that occurred previously in education for indigenous people. The research problem is to understand how school and nonschool representations and practices were constructed in the relations among protestants, State agents, and indigenous people in the process of literacy and evangelization. The thesis defended is that the indigenous people appropriated the knowledge that was inserted in the Reserve by means of evangelization and literacy and undertook coexistence and survival tactics to remain in the face of the national policy of evangelization and literacy that aimed to replace their cultures and make them Christian, civic, hardworking, and civilized individuals. The general objective of this study is to analyze school and non-school representations and practices, as well as the religious influence on the Reserve's daily practices. The research is based on the concepts of representation, practices, and appropriation developed by Chartier (1990, 1991, 2010); of strategies, tactics, and bricolage by Certeau (2014); of school institutions by Magalhães (1996, 2004, 2005); of school culture by Viñao Frago (1995, 2000), Dominique Julia (2001), and Escolano Benito (2017), of school disciplines, Chervel (1990), and of curriculum, by Goodson (2018) and Veiga-Neto (2002a, 2002b, 2004). In addition, it resorts to a bibliography referring to education for indigenous people and indigenous education, the History of Education, the history of Mato Grosso, and the history of Dourados and the region. This is a historical research, which is characterized as both bibliographical and documental research. The documental corpus is composed of official documents from the Indigenous Protection Service (SPI), as well as the Protestant newspapers Expositor Cristão, O Estandarte, O Puritano, and A Penna Evangelica, and also of primers, book and magazine, namely the Cartilha do povo - para ensinar a ler rapidamente, the Cartilha da infância, the Kuatiañe'ẽ moñe'ẽkuaarã - O papel que fala, the Primeiro livro de leitura, and the Bem-te-vi magazine. It is understood from the research that the indigenous people established dialogues with what was taught in schools, in the church, and in the Reserve in order to build some control over the impositions and, thus, not to be integrated into the non-indigenous society according to the Protestants' educational-religious project and the State's indigenist policy. It is also apparent that the ethnic groups were gathering knowledge about the culture and knowledge of non-indigenous people that made it possible to know and act on the new multi-ethnic and multicultural scenario that was being formed in the Dourados region with the arrival of non-indigenous people, who brought disease, violence, forced labor, land expropriation, poverty, and control of social, political, and religious life. Thus, this educational role inserted in the Reserve by the school, church, orphanage, and hospital contributed to the indigenous people's ability to think of new ways of acting in the new scenario in which they began to live with non-indigenous people and other ethnic groups.