Stories from the Amazon along the tocantins river

discourse, memory, and implications for education

Abstract

The article analyses three riverine stories narrated by residents of the riverine quilombola community of Itaperuçu, in Baião, Pará, taking them as discursive materialities that condense memories of gender, race, class, work, territory and the State. Grounded in French Discourse Analysis, decolonial studies, critical interculturality and critical language education, the research is situated within a qualitative, discourse-interpretive perspective. The corpus comprises the narratives of Matinta, Cobra Grande/Noratinho and Ouro, recorded in the context of a community project and transcribed for analysis. Readings of these stories highlight disputes over meaning around female authorship, the racialization of riverine bodies and the naturalization of state violence, displacing the school classification of these narratives as “folklore.” This paper argues that, when mobilized in language education projects, these stories can foster student authorship, critical reading of coloniality and the valorization of Amazonian knowledges. The text concludes by advocating the expansion of pedagogical investigations based on oral traditions in schools located in rural Amazonian contexts.