ABSTRACT
The relationship between Indigenous education and multilingualism raises issues that require considering how scholars have rethought the basic categories of indigeneity, education, learning and language. This text recognizes the long history of colonialism and racism suffered by the so-called indigenous societies, whose identity is also discussed. From an anthropological perspective on education, this paper focuses on three key ideas: 1) an understanding of multilingualism focused on the multiple language varieties and resources used by speakers in diverse situations; 2) a valuing of indigenous concepts for understanding children’s learning experiences in multilingual contexts, to favour situating language learning in everyday practice; 3) and an awareness of the dilemmas of standardization of the writing systems of each language, which tends to paralyse efforts to value and strengthen the oral use of the languages. Examples from less well-known publications of the past decade, including many published in Spanish, French and Portuguese are used to support these ideas.
