Although Brazilian native ethnic groups have shelter in the Brazilian Constitution, they have to struggle to maintain their traditions and language within the dominant society which sees itself as monolingual in Portuguese. The ethnic groups have strong support from pro-indigenous NGOs. One of these NGOs, the CPI/Ac, develops an educational program which includes an intensive indigenous teacher education course. About thirty young men belonging to ten different ethnic groups attend this annual course where Portuguese is a lingua franca and medium of instruction. This paper is based on an ethnographic study whose data come from the cross-cultural interaction between the non-indigenous teacher educators and twelve of these Brazilian native teachers. The data analyzed were recorded during a language methodology class while the teachers were discussing the preface for a textbook they had put together. The focus of the analysis is the interface of voices as related to identity construction.
applied linguistics; textbook; interaction; cross-cultural