This research investigates how the riverine knowledge tradition may contribute to math education, even if this knowledge is conditioned to a mathematical concept institutionalized in schools. The field research was based on the assumptions of qualitative research and it was was developed in three of the seventy-two existing islands of Abaetetuba State, Pará/Brazil, where the information was obtained through formal and informal conversations, registered in pictures and audios with the people who do freights and riverine inhabitant who make their living crossing the rivers in these islands; this project is informed by the theoretical contributions of D'Ambrosio (1996; 2001; 2004); Santos (2003); Almeida (2010); Cunha (2007); Farias (2006); Bicudo (2005), Brasil (1998) and Morin (2010). The research shows that the sociocultural context of Abaetetuba Islands has significant social, political, and religious knowledge production that may contribute to the teaching and learning of the mathematics process in schools. Some of this knowledge goes hand in hand with scholarly knowledge, establishing possible dialogues, particularly those that are noticeably visible. Nonetheless there are other kinds of parallel knowledge, which are likely to be poorly identified, and above all, a certain irrelevance received by the school environment.
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