Abstract
Schooling in the Arhuaco community of Simunurwa can be traced to the system inposed by Capuchin missionaries in 1916. Beginning in 1984, local education has been administered by Arhuacos, and this ‘autonomy’ has led to adoption of a program of bilingual-intercultural education. This article reports the results of an ethnographic study carried out between 1998 and 2001, the purpose of which was to describe efforts of teachers and local leaders in Simunurwa to convert the community school into a site cf cultural resistance and Arhuaco group identity. Education is linked to the defense of ancestral territory and school spaces are appropriated in an attempt to place culture and identity at the center of educational action. Language is the symbolic tool which permits ongoing dialogue aimed at fostering thought and knowledge consistent with Arhuaco cultural practices. The results of the study, analyzed at the level of community, school, and classroom, suggest that local pedagogies can serve as the basis for the transformation of indigenous schooling.
Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.