History of Indigenous Education in Ceará Based on the Life of Raimundinha Tremembé

Abstract

School education has been imposed on Indigenous peoples since the beginning of colonization, with the aim of domination and assimilation. Only in the 1970s—through the intervention of the Indigenous Movement and, later, with the promulgation of the 1988 Federal Constitution—did Differentiated Indigenous Education emerge, recognizing the traditional ways of life of these peoples. This article revisits the history of Differentiated Indigenous Education in the state of Ceará by situating the life story of a pioneer of this modality, Raimunda Marques do Nascimento (Raimundinha), of the Tremembé people, who founded the first Differentiated Indigenous School in 1991. The aim is to write a biography of the Indigenous teacher Raimunda Marques do Nascimento, emphasizing her educational work in relation to the social, cultural, and political context of Indigenous Education in Ceará in the 1990s. The methodology adopted was Hybrid Oral History, based on theoretical sources intertwined with oral narratives from Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants, complemented by documentary sources. The study shows that Raimundinha developed an innovative practice motivated by the negative experiences she and her people had in non-Indigenous schools, leading to the founding of the state’s first Differentiated Indigenous School. As a result of her leadership, the struggle for Differentiated Indigenous Education expanded, with the official recognition and implementation of this modality and the creation of other differentiated schools for Indigenous peoples.