História, historiografia, e o livro didático: os povos indígenas no ensino de história do Piauí (2004-2024)

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand the place of indigenous peoples in the teaching of history in Piauí. We started with this question, given that there is still a discourse of indigenous non-existence in Piauí. There is a historical and ideological construction of indigenous invisibility in history. However, today we know that this discourse is not sustained, since the state has been going through a process of indigenous identity emergence, in which groups are claiming their belonging and valuing their ethnic and cultural identity, their ancestry and territoriality, and consequently their rights recognized by official bodies. The most recent census carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) (2022) recorded the presence of more than 7,000 indigenous people living in the state, which means that there has been a significant increase in the identification of these peoples in Piauí. So, in order to understand this dynamic between teaching, indigenous peoples and history in Piauí, we analyzed Piauí history textbooks and classics of local historiography on the subject. We also carried out fieldwork in two indigenous communities and two schools close to them, as well as at the State Department of Education, to understand whether and how indigenous peoples are included in local teaching. We also analyzed the representations of indigenous peoples in the teaching materials used in the schools we visited. To understand what educational inclusion policies have been implemented in relation to indigenous peoples in the state. From a perspective of social and cultural history, with a focus on the need to think about decolonial education, in order to understand how the teaching of the history of Piauí is carried out in relation to indigenous peoples, we seek to propose an alternative to the current model: an indigenous pedagogy, where indigenous peoples should be the protagonists of their history.