Knowledge's intersections. Indigenous formative experiences in community and educational contexts in Argentina

PADAWER, ANA; HECHT, ANA CAROLINA; GARCÍA PALACIOS, MARIANA; ENRIZ, NOELIA; BORTON, LAUREANO

California

Simposio; XIII Inter-American Symposium on Ethnography and Education; 2013

UCLA, Universidad de California

The aim of this presentation is to introduce some daily formative experiences of indigenous children, from two Argentine ethnic groups (qom and mbya), taking place in educational contexts and through participation in other social milieu. We study different topics: 1) daily shaping of meanings about so called ?indigenous culture?. Although cultural knowledge is dynamic, daily uncertainties about the issue of ?transmision? are dealt through ?fixed? knowledge and practices. 2) Metonimic associations: It?s referring to selection of distinctive features, assigned and/or appointed as inherent to indigenous groups. These ones are used as resource for synthesizing and expressing ethnic identity. 3) The notion of ?cultural tradition? as political strategy: they express particularities, though they narrow the chances of appreciating the conflictive and historical character of ethnic identifications in a ?national? space. Changes in cultural practices seem to have less expression and transmission in communities too. This is so because the notion of ?tradition? -as that which remains unaltered through time- has become, politically strategic. The aim is outline community identities against the national society, in a context of incipient legislations to set differential rights for the native peoples. How does the everyday construction of meanings about ?indigenous culture? take place, in a context of rising but hardly debated recognition of indigenous rights, in Argentina? Through the inheritance of an essentialist historical form of approaching indigenous identity at school, adults tend to solve everyday uncertain through explicit manifestations of fixed knowledge and practices. By this, metonymic associations are restricting possibilities of appreciating the conflictive and historic character of the ethnic identifications in everyday school practice. We may conclude that the tipifications and homogeneities are daily resources to emphasize the particularism, but we should not exaggerate its reach.