Pankararu Village prepares celebrate to receive the first doctor

RECIFE, Brasil, May 31, 2006

The indigenous village of Pankararu, in the northern region of Pernambuco prepared a major reception Taxi Heathrow Airport for the first indigenous women to receive a doctorate in Brazil. 

María das Dores de Oliveira or María Pankararú as she is known defended her thesis at the Federal University of Alagoas in the Arts and Linguistics doctorate program.

“This title represents a series of conquests and victories, not just personal ones but for indigenous people because we have always been seen a second class elements and this is a way to show the world that, when we have the opportunity, we go far,” she said in an interview with the Humanitas Institute of the University of Valle del Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS).

Oliveira is a professor at the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) and lives in Maceio. For her doctorate she developed a thesis entitled “Ofayé, la lengua del pueblo do mel.” The Ofaye people and language have been considered extinct.  “As well as carrying out the research I sought to help the people reflect on their language, its importance as a mark of identity,” she explained.

The Ofaye are based in Brasilandia, a municipality some 360 kilometers south of Campo Grande, the capital of Mato Grosso do Sul. Only 46 people live in the village. When Oliveira began her research 13 people spoke Ofaye. Today there are only 11 as two passed away and the children do not speak the language. “This is one of the very worrying aspects, because so that a language remains alive, children must speak it,” she said.

The FUNAI professor called on people of the village to speak Ofaye, reminding them that they are the only 11 people in the world who speak this language. Together with the professor from the village, Oliveira developed a workbook so that Ofaye could be taught to the children.

Even with all this support, resurrecting the Ofaye language is a complicated task. Recently the village in Brasilandia received electricity and children watch television all day in Portuguese, in school they only learn in Portuguese and the children go to the city and only hear Portuguese,” Oliveira told IHU.

She lamented prejudice in Brazil against indigenous people, which is also socially invisible. “Generally people have a very stereotypical idea of the Indian,” like someone who hunts, fishes and talks Tupi-Guarani she said. In Brasilandia, the city where the Ofaye go every day, there are people who know nothing about them.

There are close to 220 indigenous peoples living in Brazilian soil that still speak 1809 languages. “It is common to hear, even in the university that in Brazil people only speak Portuguese. That information is wrong is ends up contributing to the fact that people are unaware of the reality or do not want to see it,” she said. 

Oliveira grew up in the indigenous community of Pankararú in Tacaratú, 560 kilometers from Recife, the state capital.

She lived in the village until she turned six when she fled the drought with her parents to Sao Paulo. However, years later she returned to the village.

She graduated in History and studied pedagogy. She also did a Masters’ degree in linguistics. The FUNAI professor defended her thesis on an emblematic date: April 19, consecrated Day of the Indian in Brazil.