Decolonizing constructions of childhood and history: interrupting narratives of avoidance to children’s questions about social injustice

Abstract

Together, we the authors, wonder, write, imagine, suffer, and criticize the support of the Belo Monte Monster Dam in the Rio Xingu, in the heart of the Amazon, by two of our personal heroes and fellow Brazilians: Lula, former president and iconic founder of the Workers’ Party, and, Dilma Rousseff, our presidenta guerilheira. Using our autoethnographic reflections, memories, street poetry, and decolonizing wanderings, we try to make sense of this persistent disconnect between the “discovery” of Brazil by the Portuguese in 1500 and the brutal social injustices of our everyday life. And we bring constructions of childhood and history right into the center of this critique. Throughout, we invite the reader to imagine new ways of seeing and teaching children, and thus ourselves as educators and parents, to interrupt the avoidance approach to questions of inequalities in favor of decolonizing versions of history.