A giant by thine own nature,
thou art a beautiful, strong and intrepid colossus,
and thy future mirrors thy greatness.
-- Brazilian National Anthem
The young Indian looks at the clock. It’s 3:30, there’s still time but he would like to arrive early – something that’s not going to happen now. Once again, something that’s unlike in the city, on the way he came across an indigenous person leaning against the wall, visibly bêbado (drunk). This always bothered him, even if the man wasn’t from his ethnic group (and never is). Nevertheless, the man was a silvícola (forest dweller), like himself, so he felt a tie to him. As he had done on previous occasions, he stopped, talked to the poor man, counseled him and offered to help him go home. And as on those previous occasions, his offer was turned down.
Now he’s continuing on his way to campus of the Federal University of Acre in Sena Madureira, where he will be interviewed by television crew. The subject will the schools for the indigenous peoples that have been set-up in the middle of the mata (forest), which are praised some and considered an unwanted invasion by others.
João Bernardo Kaxinawá is very proud of his raça (race) – his ethnicity and his language. In his dealings with the nawabus (the whites), he’s rather reserved, even timid. However, when he’s around his own people, and generally that’s who he’s around, he’s both an enthusiastic student and teacher. He’s already given thought to the questions that he may be asked and the answers that he would give. Why should there be schools teaching Portuguese in the lost little villages of the mata? He’s going to respond: “Because our teaching method is well developed. Our work begins in our native language, which is a combination of both Portuguese and an indigenous language. It’s called hatxa-kui which means ‘the true language.’ We can not lose our language. Our people have our own laws and our children have to be taught in our language.”
He knows, however, that they will continue to insist with their malicious question, “But who will these protected, isolated Indians speak Portuguese with?” His explanation will be simple, “Our culture needs contact, because it’s no longer possible to live without these contacts with the nawabus. But the language that the people speak in the village is hatxa-kui.” Knowing and speaking the language of the nawabus is a means of protection, helping the indigenous people to defend their rights and their identity.
The Kaxinawá people always remember some facts. He will report that “in the upper Xingu River, there are ten Kaxinawá villages, totaling about 2,000 people, where there are 40 indigenous teachers, 10 bilingual schools and 640 students between the ages of 6 and 60 years of age. There are no age limits. “Among these teachers (and he is one of them) are those on the faculty who are looking for alternatives to improve their own education.”
Won’t the insertion of formal education of whites interfere in the teaching of the history and myths of the indigenous tribes? That’s another question João Bernardo has often heard. As a matter of fact, he hopes that it comes up, because he would explain that “When we teach we’re always talking about our resistance (to white encroachment), of our traditional education, of what took place when education was only traditional which the elders taught the youth. Today we incorporate writing. We have school books written in our own language, written by ourselves, the teachers, where all these stories are recorded. It’s an ongoing research project that we conduct with the cooperation of the leaders of our villages, who have knowledge of medicine, history, music and our myths.
“The idosos (elders) greet us with open arms when we ask them. In the past it was hard, but now they see that this has value and that their knowledge needs to be preserved. There we aren’t the teachers, the teachers are the elders, everyone else is a student, and we help them. Hence, we made the books that are the sources that will be studied by our children and grandchildren. This is how a school works in our reality.
“In our classes, one doesn’t not about giraffes, one teaches about what exists in our region. In the classroom, we teach our songs, our traditions until one becomes old and the elders come and teach in our schools. I don’t call talk of the history of Brazil as one of discovery but rather of a great invasion. Brazil was already occupied by us, and we present what the invasion brought us. We talk of the resistance of the indigenous peoples to the invasion, and we show that when the whites came here from Europe, there were already people here.”
One can’t deny that João Bernardo is correct. The record of the stories, legends, myths, rituals, customs and songs of his people was precarious because it was passed-on orally, from father to son. Applying of the latin alphabet (which the indigenous people discovered while learning Portuguese) to make a written record of this traditional information, was an initiative taken by the Kaxinawás themselves.
João Bernardo, student-teacher, presently is studying education at the University. His closest kaxinawá friends are from the same village, Waldemar Pinheiro, Francisco Biná e Hilario Augusto who are studying geography, mathematics and history. In the future, each one of them will choose another area of study. João Bernardo will study sociology.
Arriving at the Faculty, the Kaxinawá still must wait for almost an hour for the interview. He was surprised and a little concerned when he found that he will be interviewed by a woman. He did not expect this and things began to unfold differently than he imagined.
The taping of the interview begins. The young interviewer’s expression, which until now was very serious, suddenly changes as she smiles, expressing an exaggerated sympathy for a reality that she’s only seen through the lens of a camera. She talks with a somewhat unseemly confidence about the schools in the forest, about the Kaxinawá, and warmly introduces João Bernardo, firing off her first question; “João Bernardo, tell our audience why the schools are teaching Portuguese the lost little villages of the mata?
João Bernardo Kaxinawá relaxes. Everything’s fine again, but ...
An Education in Flux
The schools in the middle of the forest began through private initiative, by the Servants of Mary in Acre. In 1968, Father Paulino Baldassari, OSM made a six month long desobriga (missionary visit) of the ribeirinha (riverside) communities and those deeper in the forest along the Iaco river.
During that trip, the religious priest was deeply affected by the complete lack of any kind of medical services and total illiteracy that he encountered. He paints the picture using very strong words: “At times, the foremen of the rubber-tappers knew how to read, in order to keep the record of the accounts. But here everyone was illiterate because the foremen wanted to keep them illiterate because they did not want them to find out how they were being robbed in the stores and in the sale of the rubber that they collected. The only education available in the area was offered by a single razador (prayer-leader, catechist), a person who came from the town of Ceará who knew how to rezar o terço (pray by heart) and at times would offer a little catechism.
Não tinha jeito (This was simply not right). There was a need to create schools. The literate colonos (settlers) knew how to defend themselves from exploitation and keep a spiritural life.
The saga of creating those schools is a story in parts. Making the tábuas (boards) necessary to build the school building by cutting down trees from the forest was impractical, this without a single chainsaw. What was needed was to buy ready made tábuas, but how? One night, Fr. Paulino met a seringalista (rubber merchant), a businessman and a manager at the Banco da Amazônia named Ribeiro. “How many boards do you need?” the bank manager asked. “Forty dozen.” They resolved it right then and there, twendy dozen would come from the bank manager, ten from the rubber merchant and ten from the businessman.
That’s how the first school was build, located at Boca do rio Caeté, and named “Boa Esperança” (Good Hope). This hope was realized not without sacrifice. With photographs of “Boa Esperança,” Fr. Paulino was able to get donations from Italy for the construction of some more schools. The schools were make an a community fashion. Then, if a father had five children who wished to have study there, he had to give five days of work clearing the ground, and digging the holes for the foundation and girders. The kids plantavam a grama em volta (helped out) as well ...
With help from one place or another, with the construction work done by the community and with a basic preparation of the teachers by the Servite religious, and the support of benefactors who paid the teachers’ salaries the first year and the State paying their salaries from then on, schools began to appear along the banks of the Iaco, Caeté, Macauã and Purus rivers as well as along the roads. “There were fifty well-built schools and others built of paxiúba wood and covered with thatch coming from urucari and jaci plants,” according to the priest, who could not hide his pride in the work accomplished.
The problem of working with the indigenous people was even more complicated. It depended on the finding teachers from the indigenous tribes who also had mastered Portuguese. It also depended on their acceptance by the silvícolas (forest dwellers).
The first attempts at building bilingual schools were made with the Manchineri people on the Iaco River as well as with the Kulina people under the direction of the Church, and with the Kaxinawá people on the Purus River under the auspices of the Fundação Nacional Do Índio or FUNAI (the Brazilian National Indian Foundation). In the beginning, success was by no means certain, especially with the kulinas for whom formal education did not seem important, other than knowing the mata (jungle) and learning how to hunt and fish.
Today, appreciating the need to make themselves understood with the whites, the silvícolas have taken the initiative themselves for developing a bilingual education. The Kaxinawás and the Yanomamis have taken this very seriously. With government help, they have developed a basic curriculum and received logistical help. They have received help in printing books, and receiving educational materials and school supplies (such as notebooks).
At the Kaxinawá village of Nova Aliança, for example, classes are held in the morning and in the afternoon, and classes are held for both parents and children. From Monday through Wednesday classes are offered in literacy, fundamentals of mathematics and general knowledge. On Thursday and Friday, classes are offered in dance, cantorias (singing) and ritual in order to both practice and preserve these elements of traditional culture. There are no lição de casa (homework assignments). Children’s progress is followed carefully by their parents, especially when they take them into the mata to teach them who to shoot with bow and arrow, hunt and to fish, and talk to them about many other things.
Female students are few. By tradition, women are to concern themselves with family affairs, in the kupixawa (the thatched homes of the Kaxinawás and prefer not to go to school (but when they do come, they are the best students, say the teachers).
What’s important to note with these schools is that we are witnessing here a spontaneous development which is inserting itself, quite naturally, into the tribal culture.
Job Openings for Doctors – Salary R$ 12,000.00
In the beginning of 2007, the prefectures of Coari and Parintins, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, advertized in Manaus for more than a month looking for people with various specialized medical skills offering salaries up to R$ 12,500.00 – without success. Twenty openings continued unfilled, and the prefectures were forced to repeat the offers in national journals.
Every year, the three medical schools in Manaus produce about 200 doctors but very few are open to work in the interior. The need is great. Coari has a population of 87,000 and has only one pediatrician. At the time of the job listing, the prefecture of Parintins offered a salary of R$ 9,900 for a recently graduated medical student, even without residence or specialization and the openings remained unfilled.
Coari and Parintins are only examples of the difficulties found in meeting the public health needs in the Amazonian interior, despite isolated efforts by some local prefectures.
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