Traditional knowledge and Environmental Education in Brazil: possibilities and challenges

Abstract

This paper, based on an interview with makota Cássia Kidoialê, a relevant leader of the Kilombola Community Manzo Ngunzo Kaiango, located on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, in the Santa Efigênia neighborhood - which has been campaigning for the appreciation of traditional knowledge and the importance of if one considers such knowledge in the articulation of different public policies - it reflects on the possibilities and challenges present in the necessary articulation between traditional knowledge and Western science in the process of Environmental Education. The article is composed of three parts and in the first one I will bring a brief conceptualization of environmental education and the legal frameworks that constituted it in Brazil and in the world. In the second, I will discuss the historical erasure of traditional knowledge and its disregard in the construction of environmental education and, finally, I will point out possibilities for articulating Afro-Brazilian and indigenous knowledge with environmental education in the constitution of a diverse, inclusive and broad model. The text brings clues on how to implement Environmental Education, incorporating knowledge from Afro-Brazilian and indigenous peoples, and how important this is for citizenship, since it reiterates the multiethnic, complex and plural character present in the formation of contemporary Brazilian society.