Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Indigenous Peoples in South and North America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and
Australia still live in deep poverty and ill health, and face tremendous racial
discrimination in their daily lives. Like other Indigenous organizations across the
globe, the Organized Indigenous Movement in Brazil, including Indigenous teachers
of São Paulo, helped push for the final approval of the UN DRIP in 2007. With this
goal in mind, reflecting how important it would be to move the declaration from its
draft to final form, Indigenous leaders at the workshop immediately proposed the
collective elaboration of the
Livro de Mapas de São Paulo.
Figure 4.2. Guarani leader Luiz Karaí (left) and health agent Mariano Tupã-Mirim
typing letters to local politicians asking for protection against land invasions on the Terra
Indígena Itaóca, 2003.
Back to the workshop, the eclectic nature of the group - both in terms of the ethnicity
and formal education of its members - was initially interpreted by non-Indigenous
teachers as an impediment to the success of the event. How could teachers with
college degrees learn about mathematics education side-by-side with instructors
holding, in some cases, only middle school diplomas? But the different ethnic
backgrounds and diverse forms of generating knowledge turned out to work in
our favor. Each and every participant contributed his or her expertise and wisdom
in the production of mathematical knowledge and in the making of the collective
atlas. During the course of 80 hours, all teachers-in-training used their research,
drawing, writing, and interviewing talents to produce a unique collection of cultural
and historical narratives, illustrated by various forms of landscape mapping. In the
collective introduction to the volume, the link between Indigenous sovereignty
