Schooling the Muinane: discourses on the coexistence of knowledge

Abstract

This article presents in a new way the disjunctive in which the 1991 Constitution placed indigenous groups when offering a legal floor so the state could impose its own polítical agenda. Through the direct participation of the indigenous communities in the administration of state policies and resources, the state has tried to ensure its own political hegemony over them. Every time with more force, these groups reproduce the language and the mechanisms that the state puts at their disposal to exercise the "right to be different". The author presents an ethnographic account about the discussion processes initiated by Muinane indigenous from different communities of the Middle Caquetá around the implications of the growing penetration of discourses-the "word" -of the "white man" in the "debilitation of self-knowledge". At the same time, the article contributes elements far a discussion on the statusof indigenous knowledge in front of western knowledge in the context of the pretended recognition to cultural diversity intended by the Constitution.