Indigenous communities and sign languages: the challenges of bilingual education for deaf indigenous people

Abstract

This text aims to present data from research carried out by us in the Postgraduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Grande Dourados, Brazil, in partnership with the Interdisciplinary Center for Investigations in Humanity of the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Mexico. The need to adapt the teaching provided in indigenous schools to the inclusion of deaf students raises issues involving language policies and special education policies for deaf students living in plurilingual indigenous communities. We seek to know and raise the multiple interfaces between these modalities, emphasizing the languages, the political-normative devices and the articulations between both areas, especially those produced from the principle of Inclusive Education. The research was qualitative with the theoretical orientation of post-critical studies and post-modern ethnography, in the search for knowing and exploring alternative ways of thinking, speaking and doing certain social practices, carried out in specific contexts, where the micropolitics of everyday life are observed. that constitute and are constituted by the dominant discourses of our society. Knowing the different realities and practices of inclusion in Brazil and other countries provides an opportunity for a better understanding of diverse and plurilingual school routines and allows us to think about building new and different linguistic policies that address the different realities experienced by deaf indigenous subjects.