Nheengatu Language and Its Role in the Tactics of Construction of Indigenous Identity

Maria Sílvia Cintra

doi:10.4236/aa.2018.84012

Abstract

Nheengatu is one of the co-official languages of Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira in the Amazon region (AM/Brazil). About 8000 people in the Upper Rio Negro region speak it, and there exists a contemporary movement for its revitalization in the state of Para (PA/Brazil). Based upon field research in both these regions, this paper bears reflections on the inter-relations existing between language and identity including references in the areas of Applied Linguistics, Culture Semiotics and Anthropology. I propose a discussion on Nheengatu language, which is often considered in a dysphoric way, i.e., as if it had been imposed on the natives, resulting only from the colonizers’ strategies. I propose we can instead envisage it from the perspective concerning the tactics constructed by the aboriginals in order to preserve and reconquer their identity, i.e., from the point of view of a Poetics of Relation within a complex, contradictory and hybrid linguistic approach.

Highlights

In 2010, during the month of July, I developed ethnographic and participative field research in the Upper Rio Negro city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, located in the Ethno educational Territory I, in the state of Amazon, in the North of Brazil
I propose a discussion on Nheengatu language, which is often considered in a dysphoric way, i.e., as if it had been imposed on the natives, resulting only from the colonizers’ strategies
My initial objectives were to verify: 1) In which ways the main guidelines for differentiated education, present in the National Curriculum Referential for Indigenous Education—RCNEI (Brasil, 1998), had been understood and reinterpreted/translated by the indigenous teachers; 2) In which ways issues related to literacy and to the didactic work concerning oral modality have been proposed in RCNEI and applied by teachers and educators; 3) How the acceptance of differentiated education occurs in the Upper Rio Negro communities and how the values created imply tension/friction issues; 4) Which role Nheengatu represented among indigenous people as a co-official language

Summary

Introduction

In 2010, during the month of July, I developed ethnographic and participative field research in the Upper Rio Negro city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, located in the Ethno educational Territory I, in the state of Amazon, in the North of Brazil. I stress, the role they have had in creating a literate identity for the indigenous writers themselves: whether in the case of the indigenous undergraduates at the Federal University of São Carlos, or involving indigenous educators whom I accompanied in Santarém (state of Para, Brazil), on whose experience I shall shortly report later in this paper5 It is important emphasizing, the fact that, at least in part and in a paradoxical way, I deal with Nheengatu language as a cultural artifact: on one hand, because it was part of the books, which the teachers produced; on the other hand, because it may be considered, by itself, a cultural artifact. A continuum of socio-historical discursive manifestations in which literacy and identity are aspects of complex translation phenomena, with contradictions, tensions, and pressure in addition to the presence of cultural artifacts as subjectifiers (Latour, 2005)

Considerations on the Nheengatu Language

Concluding Remarks