Between silences and resistances

culture, identity and language in the education of indigenous deaf people in Brazil – an analysis in the light of Multisystemic Theory

Abstract

This article analyzes the relevance of cultural, identity, and linguistic aspects in the education of indigenous deaf people in Brazil, articulating the perspectives of the Cultural History of the Deaf, Decolonial Studies, and Ataliba Teixeira de Castilho’s multisystemic theory. Based on a narrative literature review, the study mobilizes theoretical sources from the fields of linguistics, deaf education, indigenous studies, and decolonial studies, aiming to demonstrate that the indigenous deaf person is a subject of double colonization: the one historically imposed on indigenous peoples, which aimed at erasing their cultures and languages, and the one called colonization of the deaf, which denied the legitimacy of sign languages as full linguistic systems. Drawing on multisystemic theory, it is understood that every natural language – including Indigenous Sign Languages (ISL) – constitutes a complex system whose subsystems (lexicon, grammar, discourse, and cognition) articulate interdependently through four fundamental processes: lexicalization, semanticization, discursivization, and grammaticalization. The article demonstrates, with concrete examples from the Ka’apor Brazilian Sign Language (LSKB), how these processes operate in ISL, evidencing their status as full natural languages. It is argued that denying this status to ISL constitutes an act of epistemic and linguistic violence that schools reproduce when they ignore the language with which the indigenous deaf child came into the world. The study covers three thematic axes: the historical analysis of double colonization; the identity intersectionality of the indigenous deaf person, emphasizing ISL as instruments of cultural resistance; and the proposal of a decolonial and plurilingual pedagogical model, anchored in Paulo Freire’s thought and in the convergences between deaf and indigenous pedagogies. It is concluded that the construction of a truly emancipatory education for indigenous deaf people requires the recognition of linguistic plurality as a value, the valorization of ISL as the first languages of these subjects, and the adoption of pedagogical practices that make cultural and visual experience the center of the educational process, in a decolonization movement that is simultaneously political, pedagogical, and profoundly human.