O fio ancestral: tecendo narrativas escreviventes

Abstract

This research is based on the life history and shared knowledge of four women who are keepers of Amerindian and Afro-diasporic ancestral knowledge in distinct peripheral regions (Duque de Caxias, Nova Iguaçu and São Gonçalo). Its objective is to investigate and register the ancestral care knowledge and practices that make up the craft of black and indigenous women, healers, herbalists and educator-researchers, in dialogue with education and with the relationship of these women with such organic knowledge. The interviews were carried out based on ConceiçãoEvaristo's life experience as a methodological choice in a crossing with the narrative methodology in the construction of the interview script. Through the qualitative approach, and having the oral transmission of knowledge as the focus of the investigation, the elderly guardians and educators/researchers are the protagonists in the weaving of the ancestral thread of organic knowledge in dialogue with education in its broadest sense. The work developed so far, and with the intention of further deepening, reveals to us the importance of collaborating with the pluri-epistemological academic production, privileging the traditional knowledge, the oral tradition, and the writing experiences of black and indigenous women in their daily practices. Through the contact with the interviewees and the bibliographical research carried out for the writing of this dissertation, I could verify that it is possible, although not simple, to establish a dialogue between formal education and the knowledge inherited by our ancestors, just as it is essential to recognize the importance of such knowledge in an anti-racist struggle and the decolonization of education inside and outside the classroom. When talking about the elderly guardians in their community work and also about the teacher-researcher guardians, I make it clear that it was necessary to name them, but it is clear that the elderly guardians are the teachers of all of us, the source of our living memories, of our learning, and of our bet on the maintenance of knowledge through orality and also through the writing of these narratives. This is the point where these women meet and I meet with their knowledge. I revere those who came before. Hail to the ancient guardians, we follow in their footsteps and here we are occupying spaces of knowledge production. The university is also ours.