The indigenous time markers and the ethnomathematics: the epistemological plurality of science

Abstract

This study addressed the phenomenon of Indigenous Times Markers as a sociocultural
event, from the look of indigenous teachers from different ethnia of Mato Grosso, students of
the Indigenous Intercultural Faculty of Unemat. This phenomenon reveals itself as an example
of extraordinary knowledge that indigenous societies have of themselves and of the territories
they inhabit, in a reciprocal relationship between the people and between these people and the
environment, which brings the possibility of a scientifi c production impregnated and legitimized by them, which has as purpose and as condition to validate it, the environmental and
social welfare. The time, characterized as resulting from the construction and expression of the
lifestyles of one society, is designed from the “mathematical knowledge” and from the answers
the needs of theoric and spiritual transcendence of human beings. The mathematical knowledge
in the Ethnomathematics Program´s perspective (D’AMBROSIO, 2002) pervades this dynamic of relationships and accommodates in its fundamentals the understanding that environment
and society are part of a single and indivisible body of research on the knowledge produced by
distinct cultural groups, as well as about the dynamic process of production, intellectual and
social organization, and dissemination of this knowledge, besides the processes of adaptation and
re-elaboration that accompany it.