Krenak
Ailton Krenak's narrative:
The eternal
return of the encounter
This
is a good opportunity to report some of the old narratives of
many of our traditions, of the different tribes that live in this
region of the Americas which we identify as Brazil, but which,
naturally, long before being identified as this geographic region
of Brazil, already made history. The records of this memory, of
that history, are taken from the speeches, the narratives told
in approximately 500 different languages, to speak of South America
alone.
These narratives are narratives dated from the 17th, 18th centuries,
in the languages of some people that no longer exist. Since the
18th Century they were written in German, English, and read throughout
Europe, very important narratives that deal with the creation
of the world, the events that gave origin to sacred sites, where
each one of our old peoples lived in Antiquity and continues to
live in the present. It stuns me that we recognize that in more
than 500 languages and during approximately 300 to 400 years texts
have been published, such as the very important text entitled
XilãBalã [Chilam Balam]. XilãBalã
is a sacred text, and it as important to the Maya as the sacred
texts of Western culture, such as the Bible or the Koran. They
are texts that blend tradition and culture - the womb of the culture
that each of these ancient traditions has of the social being,
the history, the world, the encircling reality, and my admiration
stems from the fact that these wonderful texts have been published
for such a long time and yet the majority of people still ignore
those sources of our ancient history.
How has the history of the contact between whites and the ancient
peoples from this part of the planet has been taking place? How
have we been relating to each other in those almost 500 years?
Is it different for each one of our tribes the time and the very
notion of such contact? In each one of those old narratives there
were prophecies about the coming of the whites, their arrival.
So some of those narratives, dating back to two, three, four thousand
years ago, already told of the coming of this other brother of
ours, who was always identified as someone who has left our side
and we no longer knew where he was. He went very far and lived
for many, many generations away from us. He learned another technology,
developed other languages and learned how to organize differently
from us. And in the old narratives he appeared again as a guy
who was coming back home, but one didn't know what he thought
or what he was looking for. And despite the fact that he was always
announced as our visitor, who would be coming back home, who would
be coming back, we didn't know exactly what he wanted. And that
was kept in all those narratives, always reminding us of the prophecy
or threat of the coming of the whites as, at the same time, the
promise to establish a link, to re-encounter that old brother
of ours.
Both in the oldest texts, in the narratives that were registered,
and in today's speeches of our old relatives in the villages,
every time the old ones speak they begin their narratives recalling,
be it in my people's language, in which white is called Kraí,
or, in the language of our other relatives, such as the Yanomami,
who call the whites Nape. And the Kraí as well as the Nape
always appear in our narratives marking a place of constant opposition
in the whole world, not only in this place of the Americas but
throughout the world, showing the difference and pointing out
founding aspects of self-identity of each one of our traditions,
our cultures, showing the need for each of us to recognize the
difference that exists, the original difference, of which each
people, each tradition and each culture is a holder, an heir.
Only when we are able to recognize such difference not as a fault
or an opposition but as a difference of the very nature of each
culture and each people, only then we will be able to advance
a little our recognition of the other and establish a more authentic
cohabitation among ourselves.
The recent facts and history of those last 500 years indicate
that the time of this encounter between our cultures is a time
that happens and repeats itself daily. There was no encounter
between the Western culture and the culture of the American continent
on a determined date and time that we could say 1500 or 1800.
We have been living with this contact since always. If we think
that 500 years ago a few canoes arrived here in our beach, coming
with the first travelers, with the first colonizers, these very
travelers are arriving nowadays at the headwaters of the high
rivers of the Amazon Region. Every once in while the TV or the
papers show the vanguard of an expedition getting in touch with
a people no one knows, like they did recently flying over by helicopter
the village of the Jamináwa, a people that lives on the
headwaters of the Jordão River, on the border with Peru,
in the State of Acre. The Jamináwa have yet not been contacted,
they continue to run around the forests of the Upper Juruá
River, in places where the whites are coming to just now! We could
say, then, that for the Jamináwa 1500 has not yet happened.
If they manage to cross those borders, go up the Divisor range
and turn to the other side of Peru, their 1500 could happen only
around 2010. So I would like to share with you this notion that
the contact between our different cultures takes place everyday.
In the ample event of Brazil's history, the contact between Western
culture and the different cultures of our tribes happens every
year, happens everyday, and in some cases repeats itself, with
people who met the whites, here on the coast, 200 years ago, went
into the interior of Brazil, hid themselves and met the whites
again now, in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, or even in the 1990s. This
great movement of the time and also of the geography of our territory
and our people expresses the very manner of our tribes to be here
in this place.
Traditional Territories
My people's traditional territory extends from the coast of the
State of Espírito Santo to the mountain ranges of the State
of Minas Gerais, between the Doce and the São Mateus river
valleys. Even though we have today just a small reservation on
the Mid Doce River, when I think of my people's territory I don't
think of that reservation of four thousand hectares, but of a
territory where our history, the tales and the narratives of my
people light the mountains, the valleys, giving names to places
and identifying in our ancestral heritage the fundaments of our
tradition. Such fundaments of tradition, just as the time of contact,
are not a commandment or a law that one follows, linking us to
the past; it is alive just as culture is alive, it is alive, as
dynamic and alive as any human society is. That's what gives us
the possibility of being contemporary to one another when some
of our families still light fire by rubbing sticks in the area
in front of their houses or inside them, or a hunter, moving about
in the forest and lighting his fire like that - self-sustainable.
Such simultaneity that we have had the opportunity of experiencing
is a very special gift and one of the great treasures that we
have. Professor Darcy Ribeiro [a Brazilian anthropologist] used
to say that the greatest heritage Brazil received from the Indians
wasn't exactly the territory, but the experience of living in
society, our social engineering. The ability to live together
without killing each other, recognizing each one's territoriality
as a founding element of his/her identity, culture and sense of
humanity. This comprehension that we are peoples who have that
heritage and this wealth has been the main reason for me to dedicate
myself more and more to the knowledge of my culture, the knowledge
of my people's tradition, and to recognize also, in the diversity
of our cultures, what lights up in each epoch our horizon and
our ability as human societies to become better, because if there
is one thing everyone wants is to become better. The Indians,
the whites, the blacks and every color of people and culture in
the world wish to improve.
The announced contact
In the history of the Tikuna people, which lives on the Solimões
River, on the border with Colombia, we have twin brothers, who
are the founding heroes of this tradition, who were there in Antiquity,
in the founding of the world, when the mountains, the rivers,
the forest, which we still enjoy today, were being created...
When these two brothers of the Tikuna people tradition, who are
called Hi-pí - the oldest, or the one who came out first
- and Jo-í -, his partner of adventures in the creation
of the tikuna world, when they were wandering around and creating
places they walked together, and when Jo-í had an idea
and expressed it things were made, they appeared according to
his will. His brother kept an eye on him so that he would not
have dangerous ideas, and when he noticed he was having some strange
idea he would tell him not to pronounce it, not to tell what he
was thinking because he had the power of making the things he
thought and pronounced happen. So Jo-í climbed an açaí
(a kind of palm) and stayed there at the top of the palm tree,
very high, and he look far, as far as he could see, and his brother
saw that he was going to say something dangerous and then Jo-í
said: "Look, there, very far, there's a people coming, they're
the whites, they're coming here to finish with us ". His
brother was very scared because he had said that and said: "Look,
you shouldn't have said that, now that you said it you just created
the whites, now they're going to exist, it may take very long
but they will come here to our beach.". And, now that he
had already announced it, there was no way to undo this prophecy.
So the old narratives, of more than 500 different speeches and
languages only in this region of South America where Brazil, Peru,
Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela are, remind us that our old ones already
knew of this announced contact
The Tikuna have their villages partly in Brazil partly in neighboring
Colombia. The Guarani share the territory of those Southern borders
with Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia. In all those places, areas
of Spanish colonies, Portuguese colony, English, our relatives
have always recognized in the arrival of the white man the return
of a brother who had left a long time ago, and that by leaving
he left also in the sense of humanity, which we were building.
He is a guy who have learned many things away from home, often
forgot where he is from, and has a hard time knowing where he
is going to.
That's why our old people say: "You shall not forget where
you are from, nor where you came from, because that's how you
know who you are and where you are going to.". That's not
important only for the person of the individual, it is important
for the collectivity, it's important for the human community to
know who it is, know where it is going to. After the whites arrived
here in great quantity, they also brought with them other peoples,
like the blacks, for example. The whites came here because they
wanted, the blacks they brought by force. Maybe it is only now,
in the 20th Century, that a few blacks may have come from America
or from Africa because they wanted. But it was an immense movement.
Imagine the fantastic movement that took place in the past three,
four centuries, bringing thousands and thousands of people of
other cultures here. And my Krenak people, as well as our relatives
from other nations, we have received each year those people who
come here, seeing them arrive in our front yard. We saw the blacks
arrive, the whites, the Arabs, the Italians, the Japanese. We
saw all those peoples and cultures arrive. We are witnesses of
the arrival of the others here, those who come with antiquity,
and even the white scientists and researchers admit that it may
have been six thousand, eight thousand years. We can't continue
to look at this history of contact as if it were a Portuguese
event. The encounter of our cultures transcends this chronology
of the discovery of the Americas, or of the circumnavigations,
it's a lot older. Recognizing that enriches us a lot and give
us the opportunity of tuning up, of perfecting the knowledge between
those different cultures and the "ways of seeing and being
in the world" that fundamented this Brazilian nation, that
can't be a campground, it must be a nation that recognizes cultural
diversity, that recognize the 206 languages that are still spoken
here besides Portuguese. So congratulations, you come from a place
where there are people speaking more than two hundred languages,
including the borum language, which is my people's tongue, it's
a privilege to arrive in the end of the 20th Century still able
to touch, share a founding element of our culture and recognize
it as wealth, as heritage. The encounter and the contact between
our cultures and our peoples have hardly started and sometimes
it seems to be already over.
When 1500 is seen as a landmark, people might think that they
should pick that date and celebrate or debate on a demarcated
manner of time the event of our encounters. Our encounters occur
everyday and will continue to occur, I'm sure, until the third
millenium and maybe beyond. We have the opportunity of recognizing
it, of recognizing that there exist directions for an encounter
that always takes place, that always gives us the opportunity
of recognizing The Other, of recognizing in the diversity and
wealth of the culture of each one of our peoples the true heritage
that we have, afterwards come the other resources, the territory,
the rivers, the natural riches, our technologies and our capacity
to combine development, respect for nature and especially education
for freedom.
Today we have the benefits of so many anthropological studies
about each one of our tribes that are scrutinized by hundreds
of anthropologists who study from the ceremonies for the adoption
of names to kinship relations, education, architecture, knowledge
about botanic. These studies should help us to better understand
diversity, know a little more about such diversity and make this
contact more possible. It seems to me that this true contact requires
something more than personal desire, it requires an effort from
the culture, which is an effort to amplify and light up the parts
of our common culture that still hide the importance of The Other,
that still hide the importance of the ancient inhabitants of this
land, the natural owners of this territory. The way in which these
old people lived here was moved in time and also in space to give
room for this idea of civilization and this idea of Brazil as
a project, like someone who plan Brasília in the Central-West,
go there and build it.
This ability of projecting and building an interference in nature
is a wonderful thing that the West has brought here, but it moves
nature and those who live in harmony with nature away to another
place that is outside Brazil, it's in Brazil's periphery.
Another margin, it's another margin of the West, it is another
margin where the idea of the West, of progress, of development
fits. The most common idea that exists is that development and
progress arrived in those canoes that landed on the coast and
that here there were nature and the forest, and, of course, savages.
This idea continues to be the idea that inspires the relationship
of Brazil with the traditional societies here, it continues on;
so, more than a personal effort for contact with The Other, we
need to influence in a decisive manner the public policies of
the Brazilian State.
These gestures of approximation and recognition may be expressed
also in a larger and more effective space in the media, in the
universities, in the research centers, in the investments and
also in the access of our families and our people to what is good,
to what is considered conquests of Brazilian culture, of the national
culture. If we continue to be seen as those who are about to be
discovered and also come to the cities and the large centers,
and the technologies that are developed only as something that
threatens and excludes us, our encounter will continue to be postponed.
There's a common effort that we can make which is to spread out
more this vision that, yes, our history is important, yes, our
encounter is important, and that what each one of these peoples
bring as heritage, of wealth in its tradition, yes, is important.
There is hardly any Indigenous literature published in Brazil.
It looks like Portuguese is the only language in Brazil and the
writing that exists is the writing produced by whites. It is very
important to ensure the place for diversity, and that means ensuring
that even a small tribe or a small guarani village, which is here,
close to you in Rio de Janeiro, on the Serra do Mar [the coastal
range along the Southeast's coast], has the same opportunity of
occupying these cultural spaces, exhibiting its art, this creation
and this thought that doesn't coincide with your idea of contemporary
work of art, of finished work of art, in the face of your aesthetic
vision, because otherwise you will only appreciate what you make
or what you see. Our encounter may begin now, may begin within
a year, in ten years, and yet it occurs all the time. Pierre Clastres,
after living for a while with our relatives Nhandevá and
M'biá, concluded that we are societies that organize ourselves
naturally in a manner against the State; there's no ideology there,
we are naturally against it, like the wind makes its own path,
like the river water follows its way, we naturally make a path
that doesn't affirm these institutions as essential for our health,
education and happiness.
Since the first administrators of the Colony arrived here, the
only thing that this power of the State did was to demarcate land
grants, give pieces of land to feudal lords, captains, implement
patios and schools like the one in São Paulo, fortresses
like that one in Itanhaém [city on the São Paulo
coast]. Our hope is that the development of our relations may
still help us create forms of representation, of cooperation,
of administration of the relations between our societies, in which
those institutions become better educated, it's a question of
education. If progress is not shared by everyone, if development
has not made everyone rich nor made possible access to quality
of life and well being, then what kind of progress is that? It
seems that we had a lot more progress when we could drink the
water of the rivers, when we could breathe the air and when, as
Caetano Veloso [a Brazilian composer and singer] says, someone
on the beach could reach out and grab a cashew.
There's a Caetano song, a poem that says that, the native raises
his arm and grabs a cashew. In the name of progress, people prefer
to make those houses with outdoors and sell Coca-Cola on the beach.
Outside the Orient
In Northern Japan there is an island called Hokkaido, there lives
the Ainu people, there's a port on this island called Nibutani,
it's a word that still names place, just as that beautiful mountain
in Tokyo, in Japan, Fuji, also goes back to a very old story of
the Ainu people, a very beautiful story, of a mother who sat waiting
for her son who had gone to war and would not come back, winter
passed, the seasons passed and she sang, waiting for her son to
come back and the son wouldn't come so she cried because she missed
her son; her tears formed that mountain and the lake, and all
that beautiful landscape comes from that mother who missed her
son who went to war and didn't come back, so she cried for him.
The Ainu have been in Hokkaido for some eight hundred years, maybe
a little longer, because they had to keep moving up there, which
is the coldest place, leaving those territories down below for
the formation of these peoples who were coming up. Japan is, now
in the end of the 20th Century, one of the world's most technological
nations, so to speak, but they could not deny the existence of
the Ainu, they denied it until just recently. In 1970s some Ainu
managed to get to the UN commission that deals with those themes
and presented a question to the Japanese government: they want
recognition and respect for their identity and culture. Five hundred
years is nothing.
Who is Ailton Krenak
Ailton Krenak was born on the Doce River valley, in the State
of Minas Gerais, in 1954. The Krenak numbered 5,000 individuals
in the beginning of the 20th Century, but their population was
reduced to 600 in the 1920's and to 130 in 1989. At that time,
Ailton predicted: "if things continue this way, we will reach
2000 with three people". Fortunately this did not happen.
Thanks to the efforts of many people, including Ailton, the Krenak
closed the century numbering 150 individuals. When he was 17-years
old, Ailton emigrated with his parents to the State of Paraná.
He learned how to read and write at the age of 18, and eventually
became a graphic producer and a journalist.
Since the 1980's he has dedicated himself to the organization
of the Indigenous movement. In 1987, during the discussions in
the Constituent Assembly, Ailton Krenak performed a remarkable
act, which was captured by the media and caused commotion in the
public opinion: he painted his face black with genipap paste while
delivering a speech in the National Congress, as a gesture of
mourning for the retrocession in the proceedings referring to
Indigenous rights.
In 1988 he took part in the founding of the União das
Nações Indígenas - Union of Indigenous Nations
- (UNI), an intertribal forum seeking the establishment of a representation
of the Indigenous movement at the national level, and in 1989
he participated of the movement Aliança dos Povos da Floresta
- Alliance of the People of the Forest -, made up of Indigenous
peoples and rubber gatherers, which proposed the creation of extrativist
reserves for the protection of the forest and of the people that
live in it.
In recent years Ailton returned to Minas Gerais to be closer
to his people.
He currently participates in the Núcleo de Cultura Indígena
- Nucleus os Indigenous Culture -, a NGO that since 1998 promotes,
in Serra do Cipó (State of Minas Gerais), the Festival
de Dança e Cultura Indígena - Festival of Indigenous
Dance and Culture. Conceived and maintained by Ailton Krenak,
the event aims at promoting exchanges between different Indigenous
ethnic groups and between Indians and non-Indians.
Ailton's narrative "O Eterno Retorno do Encontro"
- The Eternal Return of the Encounter - was previously published
in: Novaes, Adauto (org.), A Outra Margem do Ocidente.
Minc-Funarte/Companhia Das Letras, 1999.
