Entre o português e o Ticuna: aprendizagem linguística e tensões interculturais na comunidade de Feijoal (Benjamin Constant, AM)

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the tensions, displacements, and intercultural pathways that shape the teaching and learning of the Portuguese language in the Ticuna Indigenous context, based on the school experiences of students from the Cacique Manuel Florentino Mecüracü Indigenous State School and the Professor Raimundo Carneiro Aiambo Baiatacü Indigenous Municipal School, located in the Feijoal Indigenous community, in the municipality of Benjamin Constant, Amazonas. The study investigates how students move between the Ticuna language and Portuguese throughout Lower and Upper Secondary Education, as well as the effects of this linguistic movement on school learning and the construction of Indigenous identities. The research adopts a qualitative approach of an ethnographic and interpretive nature, employing different methodological procedures such as classroom observation, structured and semi-structured interviews with students and Indigenous school staff, analysis of textual productions, and records of everyday school life. Data analysis is guided by an intercultural perspective that considers the linguistic, cultural, identityrelated, and pedagogical dimensions of bilingualism as experienced in the Indigenous school. The results show that the Ticuna language occupies a central position as a language of belonging, affectivity, and cognitive mediation, being essential for understanding school content and for students’ participation in educational practices. Portuguese, in turn, is predominantly experienced as the language of formal schooling, associated with writing, assessment, and institutional demands, and thus emerges as a recurring source of difficulties, especially in the final years of schooling. In this context, students develop their own learning strategies, such as code-switching, cultural translation, and peer support, revealing bilingualism not as an obstacle but as a pedagogical and identity-related resource. The study also highlights the role of Indigenous teachers and school administrators as intercultural mediators, whose work articulates school knowledge and traditional knowledge, contributing to the construction of culturally situated pedagogical practices. It concludes that the teaching of Portuguese in Indigenous contexts should be understood as a process of intercultural mediation, grounded in the appreciation of the mother tongue and in the development of bilingual methodologies that recognize linguistic plurality as a foundation of Indigenous school education.