Alimentação escolar na aldeia indígena Açaizal no Planalto Santareno - Pará: desafios para a sociobiodiversidade do sistema alimentar amazônico

Abstract

School meals are a universal right for all primary school students. The school is a privileged place to analyse the changes taking place in the diet, especially those related to the transformations that have been taking place in indigenous food and food culture. The aim was to understand what indigenous school meals are like in the Santareno context, based on the Açaizal village, located in the municipality of Santarém, in the state of Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon region. This is a qualitative study carried out in three stages: 1) an exploratory bibliographical search on the following themes: school meals, food and nutritional security, the human right to adequate food, food culture and indigenous peoples; 2) the choice of an immersion site to get to know indigenous school meals; 3) exploratory field research to dialogue with some of the key informants in indigenous school meals, in the context of municipal management (nutritionist), school management (headmaster) and the kitchen (cook). The information obtained through this study demonstrates the low presence or even non-existence of foods and food species from Amazonian socio-biodiversity on school feeding menus in this region. It is concluded that one of the improvements for indigenous school meals would be to create menus that are consistent with the way of life of the indigenous people of the territory, so that this food can come from local family farming and communities from the territory, with a view to food and nutritional security, as well as respect, protection, guarantee and fulfilment of the DHAA, anchored in indigenous food culture.