Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
capacity of each group to define their own future goals and aspirations, eventually
closing barriers to the importation of habits, symbols, and technologies of other
populations (Oliveira Filho 1998).
An understanding of school-taught mathematics, with its usual focus on algorithms
and calculations, is oftentimes a fundamental tool for the establishment of more
egalitarian relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples in Brazil. The
making and interpretation of cartographic maps for the protection of one's own land,
for instance, is clearly an instance where very specific mathematical knowledge
is needed. And indeed, as most workshop participants concurred, “mathematics is
important for the protection of Indigenous Peoples' rights.” As Marcos Tupã clearly
put it,
Maps are important to me because they are the protection of my land. Now we
live documented, and maps are the most important kind of document today. If
I cannot protect my land, I am letting go of my constitutional rights to land and
to cultural diversity. Didn't my people fight enough until the 1988 Constitution
gave them back their right to have a piece of land and the right to be Guarani?
I think the right to be yourself is a basic human right everyone should have.
Poty Poram added,
I live on the smallest reservation there is, less than one acre for almost
20 families! What we are trying to do now is to increase the size of the Jaraguá
Indigenous Land to include a portion of the national park area that surrounds
it, all inside the city of São Paulo! For me and for my students, as well as for
all my Guarani community, everyone needs to understand your place on the
map, where you are, where you are coming from and where you are headed.
Especially for the Guarani people, because we are always moving, headed
somewhere. Knowing maps, especially geography and history, helps guarantee
our rights. We want the opportunity to tell our own history, to draw our own
maps, to write stories in our own language. This is what I am here for, to gain
all this knowledge to empower my people and help protect their human rights.
The question for Poty Poram, Marcos Tupã and other educators then became: how
to understand and transmit school-taught mathematics within the Brazilian public
school system, while simultaneously respecting, researching, and documenting
mathematical ideas of their own peoples within a constitutional and human rights
perspective.
The ideas formulated in this teacher-training workshop indicate, once again, that
Indigenous Peoples have made significant contributions to the history of mathematics
education in Brazil. Respect for Indigenous mathematics and other ways of knowing,
however, demand that Indigenous communities have access to resources that allow
for the documentation, analysis, and the dissemination of this knowledge, if desired,
in public and private schools, Indigenous or not. It thus becomes important to
protect the right to self-determination in terms of their “inventions of traditions”
