Science Education and Maxakali Tradition: Constructing Relationships in Search of a Common World

Abstract

This article presents a reflection on Science Education in the context of indige-nous teachers training program of Maxakali indigenous group—people from the Northeastern region of Minas Gerais, Brazil. An attempt is made to portray some concerns, reflections and investigations in search of a possible approach for Science Education for this context. The Maxakali preserve not only their language, but their chants, myths and an intense ritual life. Thus, life in the vil-lage is permeated by the relationship between the tikmu’n—as they name themselves and their yamiy, the singing spirits who are their source of knowledge. This dive into the tikmu’un universe and the reflections on a set of science classes that dealt with the Maxakali in a training course for indigenous teachers, made it possible to outline a proposal approach to Science Education. An approach permeated by a more symmetrical relationship between the two systems of knowledge. Science teaching and learning is an inventive practice or creative exercise in Wagnerian terms. It means thinking of science classrooms as a relational space that favors a double anthropological exercise, both of in-digenous students in search of an understanding of a science, and of science teachers seeking a greater understanding of the Amerindian universe. Science education is a cosmopolitical practice, a space for building a common world, as Latour suggests. This form of teaching reveals itself as pluricultural, recognizing the differences between two forms of rationality, scientific and traditional Maxakali, but also respecting and welcoming other ways of existing and knowing.