Educação indígena no SPI: discurso, prática e o projeto integracionista no norte do Brasil (1962-1967)

Abstract

This work analyzes the educational practices implemented by the Indian Protection Service (SPI) between 1962 and 1967, focusing on the Northern Region of Brazil. It investigates how indigenous school education, under the management of the SPI, functioned as an instrument of an assimilationist state project, aiming at the forced integration of indigenous peoples into national society and the formation of a subordinate workforce to serve the interests of economic development and territorial occupation. The research, based on critical discourse analysis and a micro-historical approach, demonstrates that, despite the disciplinary apparatus and the homogenizing civilizing ideology, indigenous populations were not merely passive recipients. They negotiated, resisted, and selectively appropriated the school institution, using it as a tool to defend their rights and territories, while simultaneously maintaining and reinforcing their own systems of knowledge and cultural identity in spaces of traditional education.