ABSTRACT
Over 500 works of indigenous authorship were published in Brazil in the decades after 1980. The regular primary education will be administered in the Portuguese language, while indigenous communities are ensured the use of their native languages and their own learning processes. Indigenous writers, while translating their oral poetic forms into written language, forge a literature in which the reading, with their voices, is superimposed upon the writing and visual expression. To obtain a better understanding of our literary system in its relations with Brazilian society would require an investigation into the way historiography has addressed, since their beginnings, both indigenous cultural production and popular literature, and how these have been mediated to schools and to middle readers. "Intercultural workshops" with indigenous researchers as participants explore reading, writing, illustration, translation, layout development, and publication practices, and thereby establish a dialogue amongst quite different languages and cultural traditions.
