BEYOND SHELTER AND LAND: TERRITORY, MEMORY, AND THE RIGHT TO CULTURAL CONTINUITY IN DIALOGUE BETWEEN BALACHADI AND THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF ACRE

Abstract

This article explores how collective protection requires safeguarding the conditions for cultural continuity. Taking the Balachadi settlement in India, where Polish children displaced during World War II maintained educational and cultural practices, as a historical case, it develops a qualified analytical dialogue with indigenous territorial rights, memory, and cultural reproduction in Acre, Brazil, after 1988. The method is qualitative, bibliographic, and documentary. The contexts are not treated as historically or legally equivalent. Historical records, scholarship on schooling at Balachadi, territorialization studies, and Brazilian and international legal instruments support the analysis. The comic book Guardiões da Diversidade is discussed as a pedagogical proposal for intercultural education and the circulation of Amazonian narratives. The paper argues that cultural hospitality, territorial guarantees, and contextualized education are distinct responses to the ethical and political problem of cultural continuity. Documentary findings include the reported shelter of 650 children, schooling established in September 1942, and published historical evidence on cultural activities. No original fieldwork or assessed educational outcomes are claimed.