The production of knowledge about the relationship between education and religion targeting indigenous peoples in Brazil (1990-2018)

Abstract

The study comprises a mapping of the production on education for indigenous people related to religion, from the identification of theses and dissertations on the journal portal of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), of the Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD/IBICT) and from the works published in the Annals of the Brazilian Congress on the History of Education (CBHE), in the period between 1990 and 2018. In an inventive way, the research sought to analyze the thematic and methodological approaches, as well as the sources researched and the time frames chosen by the researchers. The investigation carried out made it possible to identify that the dissertations, theses, and completed works mostly privileged, as the object of study, the relationship between education and religion, the missionaries and the education given to the indigenous people of different ethnicities, the indigenous policy and its relationship with school education, and the pedagogies used by Jesuits in Portuguese America in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. In this way, they approached themes, until then, not chosen by the researchers of the graduate courses. Thus, it was possible to verify that education for indigenous people and indigenous school education are already thematic of privileged research by researchers, thus contributing to the writing of the history of education in Brazil, with new subjects, spaces, and temporalities. However, it was also found that there is a need for the expansion of this research in terms of time, geography, and ethnicity.