Addressing the Poetry of Native Peoples of the Americas in the Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

The literary productions of native peoples, invisible for centuries, have been gradually gaining ground, although they remain little known and appreciated outside their communities of origin and specialized academic circles. Such is the case of the poetry of the native peoples of the Americas, despite a corpus of great richness and diversity. In the foreign language classroom, it is possible to adopt a critical approach based on decolonial pedagogy to integrate this poetic corpus. In this article, we will begin by mentioning some of the main characteristics of literary voices in native languages (voices usually little known, unheard and with a high potential for wonder, insurrectional, specular, millenary and enduring) to then expose the potential advantages of their use in the process of learning a language when a multilingual model is adopted, attentive to the “periphery”, rhizomatic, inclusive and favoring to the development of plurilingual and pluricultural competence. We will conclude with concrete ways of using them in the classroom, listing themes to be explored, potential learning objectives and activities.