Indigenous Literature and Environmental Education, a Dialogue

Abstract

The article relates Indigenous Literature to Environmental Education, bringing a reflection on the impacts generated by the Anthropocene. We believe that the alliance suggested here can contribute to issues linked to sustainability, preservation and conservation of the environment. Through dialogues between indigenous authors, based on the perspective of decolonial thought by Ailton Krenak, Márcia Kambeba, Julie Dorrico and other authors who contribute with reflections on the challenges that present themselves in contemporary times, analyzing thoughts and knowledge of indigenous peoples, taking into account respect for their forms of appropriation of nature, extraction, transformation of natural resources, social organization and work relations. From this perspective, it is necessary not to fall into the reductionism of viewing indigenous literature only as mythology, removing from it all its potential for science, integration between human beings and nature, ancestry, symbolism, culture and enchantment. This article aims to demonstrate that the connection between environmental education and literature contributes to the understanding of new perspectives and meanings, to the networks and everyday plots that make up the forest and influence life outside it. Respect for the environment and its indigenous peoples plays a crucial role in creating a more socially just, egalitarian and ecologically balanced world, a condition considered fundamental for maintaining life on the planet. In this context, it concerns the relationship between literature and environmental awareness, a topic that in recent decades has received attention, not only from environmentalists, but also from intellectuals from different areas of knowledge. The focus on environmental degradation, the warning about the destruction of various ecosystems on the planet, reveals one of the nuclei that are the focus of this article, in the relationships between literature and environmental awareness.