The article presents results of a research currently in progress with support from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), whose context brings semiotics closer to education. Within the scope of semiotics, it´s highlighted the analysis of the potential meanings of visual representations to re-signify sociocultural practices related to otherness in education, the role of didatic material and the relationship between visual representations and cognition is addressed. The objective outlined in this article is to examine how visual representations can contribute to the construction of an environment conducive to coexistence with indigenous people. To do this the theoretical framework involves Kristeva and Todorov to address the otherness issue; Darcy Ribeiro, Krenak, Almeida and Gomes to address issues related to indigenous people in Brazil and, to deal with the visual representations of textbooks, we we rely on peircean semiotics that allows us to consider qualitative, referential and conventional aspects present in the materiality of signs and, thus, explaining their intrinsec meanings. The corpus was selected from a stratified sample constructed with Geography books for elementary education reviewed in the Textbook Guide (PNDL, 2020), consists of photographs. The article is relevant for addressing the construction of coexistence spaces involving original people’s whithin the educational context.