INDIGENOUS ISSUES AND CURRICULAR ASYMMETRY AFTER LAW 11.645/08

Abstract

This article critically analyzes the position occupied by Indigenous issues in the Brazilian school curriculum following the enactment of Law 11.645/08, which amended Article 26-A of the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law to include the mandatory teaching of Indigenous History and Culture. It argues that, although the legislation represents an important political and educational achievement, its institutionalization has not automatically produced a symmetrical curricular incorporation of Indigenous presence. In many contexts, Indigenous issues remain inscribed in a subordinate, episodic, folklorized, or historically outdated manner, even within pedagogical discourses that claim a commitment to diversity. The article proposes the concept of “subordinate presence” to name the way in which Indigenous subjects, knowledges, and historicities are formally included without, however, disorganizing the Eurocentric epistemological center of the curriculum. Methodologically, this is a theoretical-documentary essay grounded in the critical reading of Law 11.645/08, Article 26-A of the LDB, Opinion CNE/CP No. 03/2004, Resolution CNE/CP No. 01/2004, and specialized literature on curriculum, coloniality, Indigenous schooling, and ethnic-racial relations. It argues that the effectiveness of Law 11.645/08 depends less on the mere presence of Indigenous themes in school documents and more on overcoming the subordinate forms of their pedagogical inscription.