Indigenous Knowledge and Cultures in The Master’s Degree in Letters of UEMASUL: teaching practices and applicability of laws 10.639/2003 and 11.645/2008

Abstract

This paper examines how the Master's degree in Letters at UEMASUL complies with Laws 10.639/2003 and 11.645/2008 through its work with Indigenous knowledge and cultures. To achieve this, documentary research with a qualitative approach was conducted. Thus, the objective of this study is to analyze the actions taken to promote ethnic-racial literacy in this postgraduate program. It is noteworthy that after seeking answers to the guiding question, it was identified that Indigenous themes are addressed in the course in the disciplines and in the researches developed by students, from both linguistic and literary perspectives. However, the theme is addressed with greater emphasis in two disciplines: Memory and Regionality and Orality, Writing, and Indigenous Cultural Identities. Thus, we delimited the focus of this work to both. The discussion of the data was based, in particular, on the works on Indigenous literatures from the perspective of Graúna (2013) and Thiél (2016) and on literary literacy by Street (2014). The results indicate that this master ́s program has contributed to literacy for ethnic diversity, working with works with elements of indigenous identities and knowledge, which points to the relevance of this study, considering that the reading and study of indigenous literature can contribute to the valorization of cultural diversity and the decolonization of knowledge, being an important pedagogical tool for the formation of critical and engaged readers.