Course completion work done by Ivan de Souza comic (HQ) that portrays the indian sign language used by the Terena ethnic group. The work, done for the conclusion of the Degree in Libras Languages, was carried out at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).
A pioneer in the area, the work seeks to strengthen the recognition and preservation of languagesindigenous of signs. The production is also plurilingual, being signaled in the Brazilian Sign Language (Pounds).
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UFPR emphasizes the importance of keeping the mother tongue alive, as it transmits culture, history and identity of Indian people.
The villages of the Terena ethnic group are located mainly in the Mato Grosso do Sul. Deaf people of the ethnic group communicate with signs different from those of the Brazilian Sign Language, thus composing the Terena Sign Language.
Ivan de Souza's work has been developed since 2017 through a scientific initiation that dealt with the history of the deaf in Paraná. UFPR states that the entire research process was accompanied by researchers who have already developed activities with deaf Terenas, as well as users of Terena sign language. The indigenous community participated in the validation of the work.
Maíza Antonio, Terena indigenous and teacher of early childhood education, points out that research on the subject of Terena sign language is important for the community itself to better understand the signs. Worker with the mother tongue at the village school, says:
Our students have chosen to study in the city, as we are not prepared to receive them at our school. This comic strip will serve as didactic material for us to work with deaf students and as an incentive for us teachers to seek new teaching tools in this area.
Ivan de Souza and the specialists who participated in the research even produced a record in Libras of the main concepts presented in the visual narrative, as well as a plurilingual glossary with everyday words in the community, known as sign. Souza explains:
We raised the most repeated vocabularies and organized them in a spreadsheet. Then we tried to locate the signals that already exist on websites and apps. We filmed the signs and will make this material available on YouTube, with the aim of expanding knowledge about the signed languages and minimizing the language barrier.
The author also argues that this material is relevant to other ethnic groups and to society as a whole.
This is yet another material available for the Terena to teach their history in an accessible way for hearing and deaf people. It is also important to show society how different peoples, cultures, identities and languages exist in the country. And that this diversity needs to be respected, preserved and valued, points out Souza.
As guaranteed by federal Constitution, indigenous people have the right to be taught in their mother tongues, a fact that would be facilitated with the dissemination of autonomous sign languages.
According to one of the researchers mentioned in the work, Priscilla Alyne Sumaio Soares, in her doctoral thesis entitledTerena Sign Language, the preservation and propagation of indigenous languages is essential:
[…] each language reflects a way of seeing the world, a different way of thinking. If we lose a language, we lose possibilities, we lose the ability to create, imagine, think in a new and perhaps even more appropriate way for a given situation..
The work Sun: the deaf shaman, or Séno Mókere Káxe Koixomuneti, in the Terena language, tells the story of a deaf old woman named Káxe who works as a pajé in her community. After giving birth and asking the ancestors for blessings for the newborn, the future of the village is revealed through signs to the pajé.
Inspired by a real story of the Terena people, the work is set in a time when the community still lived in the Antilles and was known as Aruák.
After introducing the context, the trajectory of the Terenas and their settlement in Brazilian territory are illustrated.
In search of routes to the Andes, the Spaniards, in the middle of the 16th century, created relationships with the Terenas, called Guaná, belonging to the Paraguayan Chaco region. With the arrival of the whites, many changes occurred in the community, which sought places that could live without the interference of the colonizers.
In this way, the indigenous people arrived in Brazil, in the 18th century, and settled in the region of Mato Grosso do Sul. Despite the change of location, colonization caused other problems, such as the Paraguayan War, an event in which they were forced to participate to secure their lands. After the wars, indigenous peoples had to work on farms, resulting in their servitude.
According to UFPR, some indigenous groups remained close to the farms, being regularized at the beginning of the 20th century and forming the Indigenous Reserves of Cachoeirinha and Taunay/Ipegue.
The illustrations for the comic were made by Julia Alessandra Ponnick, a student of the Graphic Design course at UFPR, author, illustrator and screenwriter of comic books. The defense of TCC de Souza is scheduled for the end of March, as well as the official launch of the production.
The UFPR project, HQs Sinalizadas, works with cross-cutting themes of artifacts from deaf culture, such as health, culture, language and history. Thus, the objective is to create, analyze and apply signed comics for teaching the deaf.
All comics produced by the project have signed videos, drawings, signs and written in Portuguese. The work supervisor and coordinator of the institutional research project HQs Sinalizadas, Kelly Priscilla Lóddo Cezar, points out that these productions are useful for teaching about topics such as ethics, environment, health, sexual orientation, cultural plurality, work and consumption.
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