Marcio Ferreira da Silva is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Vice Chair of the Graduate Program of Social Anthropology at the Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. The following is the text of his presentation.

Good Afternoon. I would like, first of all, to apologize for my English. I would also like to welcome all those present and thank the Center for Latin American Studies of the University of California at Berkeley for their invitation to present some data and points of view on the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Schooling in Brazil. I would also like to thank the Brazilian Consulate General in San Francisco for its interest and support in this undertaking.

I am going to give a general introduction to the subject, starting from the present state of indigenous peoples in Brazil and the historic evolution of educational policies affecting these peoples. This presentation also aims to offer an overview of the present state of indigenous schools and a few thoughts regarding their legal, administrative and political advances and frustrations.

I should begin this presentation setting out some general information about the indigenous population in Brazil based on recent studies. 215 indigenous peoples live in Brazil today, made up of around 325 thousand individuals, equivalent to approximately 0.2% of the total population, spread out through almost all of the states in the country. This total of 325 thousand does no include small groups isolated from contact with general society which are found in the Amazon region, about which we have no precise information. Until 1995, the National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, the Brazilian Bureau of Indian Affairs, recognized 12 isolated peoples in existence in Brazil, but reports from anthropologists and nongovernmental organizations, apart from information collected from indians, missionaries and people living in neighboring areas, lead us to project a number three or four times that size. It should also be pointed out that the 325 thousand mentioned before do not include the indigenous people living in urban centers, about whom we have no consistent data. Initial research undertaken by non-governmental organizations in some of the more important Amazonian cities indicates a substantial population living in urban areas, which would increase our total of 325 thousand by over 15%. Meanwhile, the United States l 990 census registered about 1.9 million "native Americans". Although the North American native population is undoubtedly bigger than the Brazilian, these numbers should not be compared without first reflecting on the meaning of the categories "native" or "indigenous" within both national contexts. In Brazil, for example, children, grandchildren or great grandchildren of "native Brazilians" can define themselves as "non-native brazilians", especially when living in or close to urban centers. If Brazil used the same north american criteria of census calculation, the brazilian native population would probably pass from 325 thousand to several million.

The majority of these 215 indigenous peoples in Brazil correspond to small-scale societies, in demographic terms. Broadly speaking, 75% of these societies have less than l,000 members; 21% less than 5,000; 2% fewer then 10,000; 1% fewer then 20,000 and 1% less than 30,000. These societies, spread all over Brazil, speak around 170 different languages and exhibit many and varied types of social structure. Most of these peoples have regular or permanent contact with segments or institutions of Brazilian society. In some cases, this contact has come about quite recently. In others, the contact with the expanding frontiers of Brazilian society dates back to colonial times.

Almost 11% of Brazil's territory is officially recognized as indigenous land, coming to 90 million hectares, divided into 561 areas. Over 56% of these areas are indigenous reservations, 14% are in process of administrative regularization and 30% still have not been delimited. Approximately 95% of indigenous peoples land is located in North and Center West regions (Amazon and Central Brazil), where 60% of the indigenous population lives. The other 40% are limited to less than 5% of the land, in the Northeast, Southeast and South of the country. In most cases, these areas are being systematically put under growing pressure by economic expansion, which advances directly towards the natural resources which the land contains. To outline the type of threat hanging over these areas, we can take as an example the fact that existing or projected power generating stations affect 40 of these areas, which represent all together 40% of all reserved land. Also, roads, railways and waterways, either in use or projected, directly affect 73 areas, which represent over 50% of all reserved land. Apart from this, almost 70% of these protected areas are under pressure from domestic and international mining companies, as can be seen by the requests made to the National Mineral Research Department and FUNAI for exploration and extraction rights. And we have yet to touch on the frequent invasions by groups of freelance miners ("garimpeiros"), wood cutters and squatters ("grileiros"), the intentional fires in frontier regions which seem to become more intense as each year passes, all of these being forces which the country has no effective mechanism to control.

Shown in this light of uncertainty for the future of Brazilian indigenous peoples, two fundamental factors which have recently become part of national interest should be highlighted, as they show ways to overcome archaic indigenous policies and practices which still exist in Brazil. I am referring to the appearance of an organized indigenous movement and to the legal tolls laid down in the Federal Constitution in 1988.

From the end of the 70's, native leaders started to participate in important political events, which not only brought indigenous questions directly into the spotlight, but were also fundamental in drawing up the new legislation being discussed as a result of the end of the military regime. At the end of the 80's, almost 100 indigenous organizations were formed, mainly ethnic and local in character. Following this, some regional or national indigenous organizations came into being. According to a recent report, there are 290 of these organizations, co-existing not only with each people's traditional political institutions but also with the "chiefs", "captains", or "privileged spokesmen" named by employees of governmental or missionaries agencies, and which, in many situations, were not aligned with the traditional authorities. All of these players, supported by various segments of national and international society, made decisive contributions towards the elaboration of an agenda for the recognition of fundamental rights which are, little by little, being incorporated in Brazilian legislation.

The parameters established under recent legislation reflect the most important commitments for the Brazilian state, which give priority to reparations of the enormous historical debt with the indigenous peoples. It should not be forgotten that the most cautious estimates of the indigenous population in the XVI century were around 1 million and 100 thousand individuals, almost four times the size of today's.

Present legislation tries to provide minimal protection for these peoples in the face of the growing threats such as those I mentioned earlier, resulting from deforestation, water way pollution, growing migratory flows, the opening of new highways, the spread of disease, freelance mining, razing of the forests, activities involving hunting, fishing and woodcutting etc. These pressures unleash environmentally and socially degrading processes that cannot be turned back and which threaten the future of these societies.

Among other conditions, those which offer minimal protection to indigenous peoples include the effort to sustain or consolidate economic alternatives which afford basic social sustenance, including those which support food supplies, sanitary needs, income generation etc. It is within this framework that we should examine the repeated requests made by indigenous peoples, and their leaders, over the last few years, aiming to guarantee formal educational opportunities at all levels, in at least equal footing with the rest of national population. Considering the fragile living conditions of many of these peoples, such educational programs which take into account those aspects which I have just mentioned, and which are concerned with basic social necessities, could effectively contribute to overcoming the present situation.

To avoid the misconception that our subject today is only one of many aspects in a "greater" indigenous problem, in that it is too specific, we need only to look at the numbers: in Brazil today there are no less than 1.591 schools in operation in indigenous areas, and these schools have enrolled 76.293 1st grade to 4th grade students, according to recent research from the Ministry of Education. Therefore, we are talking about something which directly affects more than one quarter of the total indigenous population in our country. Apart from this, as the youngest segments of this population are the majority of those involved, the future effects of the indigenous question are even more evident. As I will try and bring to your attention later, most of these schools work under extremely precarious conditions, which is, in fact, acting as an incentive for these students to abandon indigenous areas and migrate to the outskirts of urban areas where the younger segments of the indigenous population seek more attractive educational opportunities and future prospects.

Important documents produced by the indigenous movement, such as the Indigenous Teachers of Roraima, Amazonas and Acre's Declaration of Principles, in 1994, are sensitive to these problems and propose putting into action educational programs which aim to recuperate indigenous peoples' historical perspectives and reaffirm their ethnic identities, give more value to their cultures and technologies, environmental preservation, the use of natural resources, recuperation of degraded areas etc. In brief, educational programs which include the indigenous peoples' knowledge and experience as regards their traditional social and environmental views, and permanent dialogue with public and private sector technical and executive agencies are what are required today by the organized indigenous movements in Brazil. I have followed this line of thinking closely during my visits as invited assistant at the annual meetings of the indigenous teachers from Amazon, Roraima and Acre since 1989. I am in full agreement with the point of view that achieving these education programs today is fundamental not only for the continued future for these indigenous peoples in Brazil but also for the consolidation of a harmonious relationship of these people with national society and the State. On the other hand, while understanding the reasons which justify incorporating traditional western schooling among the indigenous peoples' demands in Brazil, I cannot avoid expressing a certain perplexity when considering such a demand. This is because - and the Brazilian indigenous organization certainly recognize this fact - traditional schooling represents one of the most powerful weapons against these very peoples.

The "indigenous schooling question" - as we in Brazil refer to this matter - is one of the themes which has run through almost five centuries of our history. The first schools for indigenous peoples were set up under Jesuit missionary initiatives, supported by royal documents and Regiments decreed by the Portuguese Crown. These schools were started in the middle of the XVI century as a result of the coming together of the missionary vocation of the Company of Jesus and the colonization policy of the Portuguese King, D. Joao III, which inaugurated a partnership between religious missions and secular power which would persist in Brazil for many many years. From the XVI to the XIX century, a period which covers Colonial and Imperial Brazil, one cannot dissociate schooling activities for the indians from the civilizing paradigm. In short, the political submission of the native population, the invasion of their traditional areas, the pillage and destruction of their riches etc. has been, since the XVI century, the result of practices which have always been able to ally methods of political control with some sort of civilizing school activity. Colonialism, indigenous education and religious conversion are practices which have, in Brazil, the same origin and more or less the same age.

In the 1549 Regiment, which empowered Tome de Sousa, the first General Governor of Brazil, Dom Joao III, King of Portugal, says that "... the main reason behind ordering the aforementioned population of Brazil was so that the people there would convert to our Holy Catholic Church. The very same year - 1549 -, Jesuit missionaries, led by Father Manuel de Nobrega, founded in what today is known as Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia, the first school for indians of which there is record in Brazil. The same type of institution started to spread to many other places along the Brazilian coastline shortly after. In 1554, for example, the same Father Manuel da Nobrega founded a new school in the Piratininga fields, around which the city of Sao Paulo grew, today the largest in Brazil. A little later, still during the XVI century, a school for indigenous candidates for the position of novice began in what today is Rio de Janeiro, and so on.

In the following centuries, the mission-schools spread all over Brazil, from North to South. In the Missions and Villages Regulations, set out in the XVII century by Father Antonio Vieira, one of the most important Jesuit intellectuals of the colonial period, we can get a clear idea of the routine activities of these establishments: "Every day, after prayers, a mass will be saidfor all the indians to hear before they get to their plantations [...] which when finished the indians will be taught out loud the common prayers. to wit the Our Father, Hail Mary, Credo, the Commandments of our Lord and our Holy Mother Church; and the Sacraments, acts of contrition, and confession, the dialogues of the shorter catechism which contain the mysteries of faith. Having finished this doctrine everyone will go to our school [...] where the more skilled will be taught to sing as well, and to play instruments for the benefit of holy rituals..." (Beozzo 1983: 196).

Little by little, more notably in the last decades of the colonial period, the Portuguese Crown started diversifying its partnerships, delegating the responsibility for educating the indigenous peoples not only to other religious orders but also to some farmers, the military or even ordinary inhabitants of areas bordering the indigenous settlements. The introduction of these lay people does not mean, however, that an indigenous education free of religious influence would emerge. Civilization and the conversion of the "gentiles" continue to be explicitly laid out in these and other documents from the first two decades of the XIX century.

With the coming of the Empire, in 1822, the year of Brazil's Independence, the general outlook of indigenous education in general does not change significantly, at least in terms of its implicitly missionary set-up. The Constitutional Project which was laid out shortly after the declaration of independence openly states its intention to create "establishments for the religious education and civilization of the indians". The first Brazilian constitution of 1824, however, does not address the indigenous matters at hand, which were only dealt with ten years later by the Additional Act in 1834, which empowered Provincial Assemblies "to promote cumulatively with the General Governments and Assemblies the conversion and civilization of the indigenous peoples and the establishment of colonies".

Soon after, the Decree formalizing the "conversion and civilization of the indians" empowered the General Directors of the indians, named in all of the Empire's provinces, to "propose to the Provincial Assembly the creation of primary schools for those places where a Missionary is insufficient for teaching". Meanwhile, another decree ruled that "there will be a Missionary for the newly created villages, in those located in remote places or where there are nomadic indians", being responsible for "making representations to the General Director... if there are WANDERING indians in the neighborhood, which it is necessary to bring into religion and society" and "teach the boys, and those adults who show themselves to be willing to learn and not use violence, to read, write and count". A Senate resolution from around the same time entertained the idea of military education for captured indians or those who gave themselves up during the so called "Just Wars" or "Justified Wars" ("Guerras Justas", in portuguese).

At the end of the Empire, at the end of the XIX century, the state governments are named as the organs responsible for "conversion and civilization of the indians". In 1906 indian matters and specifically schooling come under the auspices of the newly created Agriculture Ministry which soon after included a department dedicated to these matters: the Indian Protection Service and Placement of National Workers, S.P.I. Within this new judicial-administrative framework, the first indian schools not directly associated to missionary initiatives but sponsored by the federal government start to appear.

The 1934 Constitution, the first which gave exclusive powers to the Union to legislate on indigenous matters, consolidated an administrative framework for indian schooling which would only be significantly altered again in 1991. Although it doesn't specifically focus on this area, the 1934 text gives generic powers to the Union to legislate on "the incorporation of the forest dwellers into the national community", powers which were upheld in the 1945 and 1967 Constitutions. In this setting, the indigenous schools organized by the S.P.I. - 66 in 1954 - together with the innumerable missionary schools maintained by different religious congregations and the work fronts, represented the main institutional instruments of this constitutional "incorporation", a process marked by the denial of cultural differences and by ethnic assimilation.

It should be noted that the schools under the S.P.I.'s authority characteristically incorporated curricula strictly identical to those of the rural schools for non-indigenous populations, including rudimentary reading and writing in Portuguese and the so-called "professional preparation" activities. Riddled with all types of deficiencies, the indigenous schools grew in number and many still exist. Meanwhile, the missionary schools continue adopting the curricular models which they find most convenient. This is the state of the indigenous schools in the mid-20th century.

This framework of judicial and administrative references which I have quickly gone over came up against a strong counter-balance towards the end of the fifties: Convention 107 of the International Labour Organisation, in 1957, which relates to the protection and integration of indigenous and tribal populations in independent countries. This ILO Convention was only considered in Brazil the following decade.

Careful reading of ILO Convention 107, over and above its subjugation tendencies, rectified by the ILO itself in later documents, allows us to see the main changes in the judicial and administrative framework which had lasted almost unchanged since the 16th century. It should be pointed out that this document lays out new standards for indigenous schooling, which were incorporated from the seventies on, in indigenous non-governmental organization agendas, the indigenous movement and progressive areas of public opinion, finally being absorbed in recent years by the Brazilian judiciary.

I would like to call your attention to the following principles defined under the ILO Convention 107: 1 - the universal right to formal education for indigenous peoples; 2 - the consideration of specific and different social, economic and cultural realities; 3 - the adoption of reading and writing models in mother tongues and bilingual education; 4 - the incorporation in primary schools of general knowledge and skills made necessary by contact; 5 - the fight against prejudice relating to indigenous peoples in the many levels of national community through education; and finally 6 - the official recognition of indigenous languages as means of communication with these minorities.

It is wise to point out that although there are irrefutable advances brought about through the incorporation of ILO Convention 107 within Brazilian indigenous legislation, on the other hand we cannot forget that it was adopted precisely in 1966, in the middle of an authoritarian regime. Institutional Act no.1 from 1969, issued by the military government, reaffirms to the letter the worn out ]'the incorporation of the forest dwellers within the national community". The same year, the government created the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), which succeeded the S.P.I., extinct in 1966, which reached an agreement in its first few months of existence with the North-American missionary agency the Summer Institute of Linguistics (S.I.L.), a powerful subsidiary of the Wicliffe Bible Translators. S.I.L. would transfer to Brazil its traditional educational methods whose touchstone is teaching reading and writing in the mother tongue. I presume that you are all aware of S.I.L.'s enormous influence on indigenous policies in Latin America. It should also be noted that S.I.L. was just the first - and not the only - North-American missionary organization to spread over the indigenous areas in Brazil since the end of the sixties. Other religious organizations of the same type co-exist since then in many indigenous areas with the Brazilian fundamentalist protestant and catholic missions.

Apart from defending the adoption of bilingual educational programs, the latest objectives of S.I.L. are evidently a far cry from the spirit of the ILO Convention 107 which I mentioned previously. S.I.L.'s objectives are no different from those of any other traditional mission: the conversion of the indians and the saving of their souls. Their methods, however, are in some ways peculiar, incorporating a bilingual educational model which is an integral part of their evangelical strategy. Within the framework of this new missionary standard, the idea is not to wipe out differences but domesticate them. In other words, the linguistic difference is no longer an obstacle on the path to civilization, becoming one of the tools of the project. And for the sake of appearances, the inclusion of S.I.L. within the State sphere met legal requirements.

The judicial and administrative references from the beginning of the seventies should therefore be interpreted as the coming together of the religiously dogmatic educational model idealized by S.I.L. and the indigenous framework put forward by the military regime. In the Indian Statute - a law passed in 1973 -, for example, there is explicit reference to teaching reading and writing "in the language of the group to which they belong", but nothing regarding the of official recognition of these languages as means of communication with these ethnically different minorities or even regarding the adaptation of educational, social and economic programs specific to each situation, as ILO Convention 107 posited. Overall, the teaching of communication skills in native language, included in law in the seventies, is born of a purely instrumental missionary practice.

At the same time that S.I.L. intensified its educational activities in Brazil, the first reports of the development of modern experiments start to arrive in the country from other Latin American countries, notably Salvador Allende's Chile. In the framework of these new methods, bilingual education is not proposed as a learning tool for the indigenous populations, but as a strategy to conserve the native languages and reaffirm ethnic identities and cultures. Offshoots from the educational model and philosophy constructed by the brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire, these new programs tried to develop methods based on the opportunities offered by bilingual skills themselves. In this way, within a continental panorama which is marked by the devaluation of traditional cultural manifestations, disregard for identity and learning processes based on dominant force, a new bilingual educational standard is born from the recognition of indigenous peoples as minorities and victims of the discriminatory mechanisms of their own ethnic condition.

Over the last twenty-five years, some alternative models have been tested in different regions of the country, by more than a dozen non-governmental organizations in conjunction with various research centers, building on a new educational proposal which was finally included in recent legislation. With the end of the military regime in the mid80's, and an opening of democracy, new judicial and administrative resources were brought to bear in this area, taking up once more - and this time quite vigorously - the ILO flag and consequently the principles it represents and those set out by other international organs. The principal conventions adopted in Brazil today are the following:

Firstly, the 1988 Federal Constitution should be mentioned once again as, apart from recognizing the indians' "social organization, customs, languages, beliefs and traditions, and the rights of origin over the lands which they traditionally occupy", it also establishes that "regular basic schooling will be ministered in Portuguese, while guaranteeing the use of mother tongues and specific learning processes in indigenous communities". Apart from this, the "State will guarantee universal rights to exercise cultural rights and access to sources of national culture, and will support and encourage the importance and spread of cultural manifestations". Finally, the "State will protect popular, indigenous and afrobrazilian cultural manifestations and those of other groups participating in the national process of civilization".

Alongside these constitutional mechanisms, the National Educational Directives and Bases Law (DBL) regulate the present situation. Two articles in this new law deserve to be highlighted here, as they regulate in quite a lot of detail the constitutional mechanisms relating to indigenous schooling. One of these reinforces indigenous peoples' linguistic and social/cultural diversity, guaranteeing an education based on respect for their values, the right to preserve their identities and by the guarantee of access to information and knowledge of national cultural importance. The Union also gives responsibility for technical and financial support to the state and municipal governments to develop work done in the indigenous schooling area, guaranteeing the incorporation of "specific programs and curricula" and the systematic publication of "specific and differentiated teaching material".

These are a summary of the present legal parameters for public sector policy regarding indigenous schooling in Brazil. One of the immediate effects of the new tools in the administrative area is the recently intensified creation of centers, divisions and councils for indigenous education in almost all of the Brazilian states, which is, clearly, very positive. However, we should not lose sight of the cultural characteristics of the public sector itself, that the creation of administrative levels or the remodeling of certain institutional configurations does not guarantee in themselves the desired transformations into daily practice.

There does not appear to be a way to improve on the present situation of indigenous schooling without the proposal and adoption for the institution of human resources for this area, specifically according to the ILO Convention 169: "Educational measures shall be taken among all sections of the national community, and particularly among those that are in most direct contact with the peoples concerned, with the object of eliminating prejudices that they may harbor in respect of these peoples. To this end, efforts shall be made to ensure that history textbooks and other educational materials provide a fair, accurate and informative portrayal of the societies and cultures of these peoples ". If the public sector agencies which are responsible for carrying out programs set down in law are not made politically aware, these policy advances run the risk of never leaving paper. Evidently, we cannot hope for the new legal references to produce the desired effects - for all that they may be adequate and for all the best intentions of legislators and federal executive agencies - in a scenario still marked by an enormous lack of qualified human resources to carry out the package of tasks established by law, by ignorance of indigenous matters or even by all sorts of prejudice, especially at state and local levels.

As a general comment on present legislation regarding indigenous schooling, we can affirm that the tools we have at our disposal today are undoubtedly better than those in the past, even though they require fine tuning in at least on aspect which is not linked to methodology or operational expedience, but being fundamentally political. I insist that the guarantees for effective participation (and not just rhetoric) of the indigenous population in areas such as planning, execution and management of new indigenous educational programs are precarious.

The DBL says specifically that "the programs [integrated teaching and research for indigenous peoples] will be planned in the consultation with the community". Well, the term "consultation" ("audiencia", in portuguese) has often been interpreted - and put into practice - in a way which does not result in the interested populations having effective control of these programs. We should note that the ILO Convention 169 explicitly states that the "educational programs for the peoples concerned shall be developed and implemented in co-operation with them to address their special needs...". The term "cooperation", adopted by the ILO Convention 169, brings an idea of partnership between the indigenous peoples and the government, in a bi-lateral channel between these two organs. Meanwhile, the term "consultation" used in Brazilian law, has permitted a unilateral and asymmetric relationship which can lead to a series of misunderstandings. In other words, the "consultation" concept does not ensure legal bases for the effective involvement of indigenous peoples in official policy with minimal guarantees of symmetry between the two sides.

In short, a look at the present state of schooling brings around a recurrent theme in our recent indigenous history. Any observer could not help but notice that over the past few years, this subject has been developing on two distinct and contradictory levels: on the one hand, we can see the growth of legal and administrative tools which seek to effectively transform indigenous schooling and, on the other hand, we find that enormous obstacles remain, obstructing the path to consolidation of recent advances in terms of day-to-day life in these schools, as also seen in their relationship with the relevant state and municipal agencies.

This takes us to the principal dilemma of the new indigenous educational programs. The conditions for setting up truly indigenous schools come not only from the specification and diversity of educational programs, but also principally from the autonomy of these programs. Autonomy which gives guarantees that these educational programs effectively meet the needs of the projects for the future of each people. In this light, guarantees of autonomy necessarily imply the development of effective social controls by the indigenous populations which are directly connected to these educational programs. These guarantees strongly support the effective participation of indigenous peoples in the drawing up, implanting and management, and not the window dressing which is still seen. Without guarantee of social control, the decentralization of educational responsibilities could have results totally opposed to what we would hope for, as has happened in other Latin American countries who have applied this model over longer periods, as in Mexico, for instance, where this has been going on since the 70's. In short, the autonomy which I am defending means the recognition of the validity of internal customary rights and the participation of indigenous peoples in decisions which affects them. This idea has nothing to do with any sort of demands for self-government, as some more conservative sectors of the armed forces and civilian society in Brazil still fear.

The formalization of such programs is a complex task, especially when we remember the present state of indigenous schools in the region, a far cry from the standards put forward above, the general shortage of human and financial resources, the lack of detailed studies and research on the different micro-regional situations, apart from the obstructions and misrepresentations of all types.

To give a brief idea of the situation of indigenous schools today in Brazil, we can look at the following data. As I said at the beginning, according to the Ministry of Education, there are in Brazil 1.591 indigenous schools and a total of 76.293 enrolled students in the grades which include the old primary system.

Of all of the indigenous students registered with FUNAI, 62% are in pre-school or 1st year, 17% in the 2nd year, 10% in the 3rd year and 6% in the 4th year. The other 5% are distributed between the 5th and 8th years. The FUNAI data shows a sharp fall in student numbers between 1st and 2nd years of basic teaching, revealing a very precarious situation in these schools.

Only 14, out of a total of 735 schools are found in the Amazon region (in other words, less than l %) offer complete first grade curricula, or 1st to 8th year courses. Taking into consideration the fact that the majority of these schools have been working continuously for various decades, any observer would agree that the situation of the indigenous schools in the region is still very delicate, with alarming rates of absenteeism.

We can therefore conclude that if in the last few years there have been important advances in legislation regarding indigenous education, the same cannot be said for the indigenous school system itself, apparently as badly structured as fifty years ago. What we can see in terms of new development, apart from the thinking, administrative tools and laws, is the indigenous teachers participating in these schools. According to the Ministry of Education, out of 2.859 teachers working in indigenous schools in Brazil, 2.041 (71%) are indigenous teachers (MEC 1998:40-1). These indigenous teachers are more frequently demanding professional training programs which, under no circumstances, goes against the points of view which the indigenous movement holds. On the contrary...

So, the challenges facing indigenous education in Brazil turn on two important matters: a) the implementing of integrated teaching and research programs which offer school education and are guaranteed by law, which also includes the preparation of human resources (indigenous teachers, professionals for the technical and administrative agencies involved etc.) and b) guarantees of autonomy in educational projects, schooling or otherwise, with a view to the characteristics and necessities defined by the indigenous peoples in each case.

In sum, Brazil approaches the 21st century with fairly advanced indigenous schooling legislation, when compared to other American countries and international declarations, and even with new administrative resources dedicated to this area. With no disrespect to these advances, it should be remembered that these advances do not guarantee in themselves any deeper changes in a scenario which still has roots in 500 years of history. In other words, an advanced indigenous schooling legislation is a necessary but not sufficient condition to overcome old unfavorable models and practices. Objective social situations do not change by simply making their participants more aware, much less by publishing laws, decrees etc. The real possibilities for overcoming the present panorama depend specifically on the implementation of public policies (and I do not restrict this to only government policy) which look to the betterment of the present group of indigenous and non-indigenous teachers in these schools, the fight against ignorance and prejudice against the rights of indigenous peoples within more resistant sectors of Brazilian society and public organs, and a wide-ranging and unrestricted participation of the indigenous peoples in all decisions which affect them, starting with those that include their schooling education. After centuries of educational models aimed at assimilation and at the doorstep of our country's 500th anniversary, we have no more sensible alternative than to accept these demands.

Muito obrigado. Thank you.