EDITORIAL – The oppression of indigenous leaders demanding education in Pará

By Paula Litaiff – From Cenarium

The special report in this edition of CENARIUM MAGAZINE, which highlights the precarious state of public education in schools within traditional communities in the State of Pará, may be underpinned by reflections drawn from two important works in the history of Brazilian education: Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), by Paulo Freire, and Half Face, Half Mask (2018), by Eliane Potiguara, the first book published individually by an Indigenous woman.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire exposes the interests of those who work deliberately and covertly to degrade education and reinforce processes of domination and oppression over underprivileged groups, rendering them invisible with the aim of maintaining corrupt systems of power, and working to ensure low educational attainment and a lack of critical knowledge among traditional peoples.

With Half Face, Half Mask, Eliane denounces, in both verse and prose, the violence against Indigenous peoples and the threat to their traditions through governmental projects that undermine Indigenous education. The work is considered a song of revolt and liberation, and addresses the Indigenous diaspora by pointing out that certain Brazilian ethnic groups are compelled to abandon their lands in search of other spaces to preserve their ancestral culture.

The works of Freire and Potiguara mirror the struggle for the democratisation and preservation of the identity of traditional peoples in Pará since the repeal of State Law No. 10.820, on 12 February of this year. This law aimed to dismantle Indigenous and Quilombola education under the guise of administrative reform, by implementing a distance education system and dismissing community teachers — a plan that failed thanks to the, at times physical, resistance of Indigenous leaders.

The special content in this edition of CENARIUM MAGAZINE, authored by Pará-born journalist João Paulo Guimarães, is, above all, a renewed cry for help from the leaders of traditional peoples to national and international institutions. They fight for a liberating education and fear that their cultures will be extinguished and survive only in drawings and texts of virtual books written by those who have never known how to value them.

The topic was featured on the cover and as a special report in the latest edition of CENARIUM MAGAZINE. Click here to read the full content.