DISMANTLING THROUGH EMPTYING: BILL 1007/2025 AND THE DISPUTE OVER AFRO-INDIGENOUS MEMORY IN THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Abstract

This article analyzes Bill 1007/2025, presented by federal deputy Clarissa Tércio, which proposes to make optional student participation in classes and events with cultural-religious content, directly affecting the mandatory teaching of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous history and culture. It is argued that the bill constitutes an offensive against Laws 10.639/2003 and 11.645/2008, shifting consolidated curricular rights to the terrain of voluntary adherence. The analysis recovers the historical trajectory of these laws as achievements of social movements, examines the function of curriculum as technology of power and memory, and deconstructs the discursive strategy of reducing Afro-Indigenous knowledge to the religious field. Based on Aníbal Quijano's studies on coloniality, Kabengele Munanga's work on anti-racist education, and Catherine Walsh's contributions on decolonial pedagogies, the text maintains that Bill 1007/2025 represents an attempt at symbolic recolonization of the Brazilian school curriculum. It concludes that the mandatory teaching of Afro-Indigenous history is not a matter of cultural diversity, but of historical reparation and epistemological justice, and that its defense is fundamental for consolidating an education that confronts structural racism as part of its historical task.