The conception of “indian” in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's textbooks

Abstract

Considered a central instrument in the teaching and learning process and understood, at the same time, as a product and exponent of the context in which it was written, the History textbook is taken, in this article, as a primary source to reflect on the way in which indigenous societies were seen, during the 1970s, and how they were didactically represented. Therefore, the three books that make up the Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Collection, produced under the supervision of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in the period of resurgence of the civil-military dictatorship in Brazil, are analyzed. The results indicate that a historiographical conception with a positivist bias is present in textbooks, which gives rise to a Eurocentric and stereotyped view of the native peoples of Brazil, resulting, in part, from the political-economic ideals projected by the military that commanded the country from 1964. Thus, these populations are given a role of mere supporting actors in the Brazilian historical-cultural formation, a treatment that not only prevailed in that context but was also exported to the following decades.