The contact agents that work among the Palikur are: the FUNAI, through an indigenous post in the village of Kumenê, the head of which is a Palikur Indian, but which is greatly restricted because of lack of financial resources; and the National Health Foundation (FUNASA), which is limited to sporadic visits for vaccination or spraying of the villages in periods of malarial epidemics, but with the creation of the indigenous sanitary districts, since the end of 1999, has had its executory functions transmitted to the Association of the Indigenous Peoples of the Oiapoque (APIO).

Since 1988, the government of the state of Amapá has been responsible for education in indigenous areas. But it was only in 1995 that a course in training of bilingual Palikur teachers was begun. For the state government, it was fundamental to train indigenous teachers, not only to improve the quality of teaching, since the first two years of literacy would be given in pa’ikwaki and students and teachers understand each other better when they speak the same language, but mainly to make the school more meaningful and relevant for the community. With the training of indigenous teachers, the problems that are common in the relations between Indians and non-Indian teachers were solved: the non-adaptation of non-indigenous teachers to life in the villages, the problems of language undertanding on both sides, the lack of commitment to the local community, and others.

Despite the effort on the part of the state and the Palikur, the number of teachers who are capable of teaching is small, because, obviously, it takes time to train a teacher. For the time being, the only option has been to place non-Indian teachers in order to supply the demand in the indigenous area.

At the beginning of 2000, the Núcleo de Educação Indígena (Nucelus for Indigenous Education, NEI) of the state government began work for the realization of a political and pedagogic project with specialized course proposals for the schools of the indigenous areas of Amapá. The duration of this project is a year and eight months, and its main objective is to promote a radical change in the traditional teaching plan, adapting it more to the local realities, and with that guaranteeing the good functioning and future of indigenous schools.

Finally, it is worth highlighting the actions deriving from the joint partnerships between indigenous associations and the state government, begun in 1995. In this partnership, the priorities are established by the associations, which are also responsible for the projects’ execution, hiring laborers from the indigenous community. The government comes in with financial resources and, when necessary, specialized consultants. Among the Palikur, one of the partnerships with the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Oiapoque (APIO) resulted in the building of four new schools, one of which has a capacity for 400 pupils.