Ethnicity and education: How Indigenous knowledge and cultural identity are passed on through the Torém ritual of the Tremembé people

The Tremembé people live on the west coast of the Brazilian state of Ceará in three municipalities (Itapipoca, Acaraú and Itarema). Despite having suffered from being labelled dismissively as mixed-blood through intermarriage with Portuguese settlers, and thus denied their Indigenous identity, this Amerindian group has achieved social notoriety by organising themselves around their sacred ancestral ritual, the Torém. It is a circular dance, with singing in Amerindian and Portuguese, that evokes “enchanted” beings, and during which participants drink mocororó (a hallucinogenic drink made from fermented cashew nuts). This ritual permeates the transmission of particular identity knowledge such as language preservation, self-designation and identity affirmation. The study presented here examined how the Tremembé pass on their Indigenous knowledge at Maria Venâncio Differentiated Indigenous School, located on the beach of Almofala in the municipality of Itarema, through the practice of the Torém ritual. Choosing a phenomenological approach for their research, the authors describe their observations of Torém teaching sessions at the school and evaluate the oral reports of six Indigenous people whom they interviewed. This article instigates and contributes to the debate on an expanded conception of intercultural education.