O saber indígena Kaingang: historiografia, etnociência e educação científica

Abstract

The indigenous people of the Kaingang ethnic group are among the most numerous indigenous peoples in Brazil. Belonging to the Jê linguistic family, they are part of the Jê Meridional branch, located in the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. They currently occupy more than 40 Indigenous Lands, with an estimated population of over 40,000. This PhD thesis in Doutoramento em História das Ciências e Educação Científica (Coimbra University) in accordance with the Doutorado em Ensino de Ciências e Tecnologia (Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná) involves history, science and culture in a focus on studies on the ways of considering nature, of how man developed his techniques within different traditional contexts, and at the same time investigates its interrelationship with other forms of knowledge and its transformations in history. This research has two main focuses, the first with the objective of making a historiographical survey of the Kaingang indigenous culture in relation to the indigenous knowledge and knowledge of this ethnic group. It is intended to demonstrate, from a historical survey, how their practices developed and at the same time interpret them from the point of view of scientific knowledge. The second focus is the development of an educational activity in the form of a didactic unit to explain science­related content and practices from other forms of knowledge. This type of approach may enable the teaching of scientific or even interdisciplinary concepts, based on the selection of indigenous knowledge that have the status of ethnoscience, making it an attractive activity for contextualization work supported by the Science, Technology and Society (STS) approach, proposing a rapprochement between indigenous knowledge, science and students, in addition to reinforcing the appreciation of Brazilian indigenous culture, and in particular the Kaingang indigenous culture.