Image

Célia Xakriabá had barely left her childhood when she began to accompany the leaders of the Xakriabá Indigenous Land (MG) in national mobilizations on behalf of its people. She was only 13 years old when she first entered the National Congress to make a statement, she recalls, and began to hear from her relatives that she would still be the future deputy for the Xakriabá.

Célia, 19 years later, affiliated with PSOL, sees this project come to fruition. She became the first indigenous woman in the history of the state of Minas Gerais to be elected federal deputy, with more than 101 votes. As of 2023, she will take a seat in the Chamber alongside four other parliamentarians who declare themselves indigenous, a record, with emphasis on Sonia Guajajara, also from PSOL, which was chosen to represent the State of São Paulo.

“We've come this far because we've decided that others are not going to speak up when it's our time,” she stresses. “Our time is when we can no longer bear genocide [and] ethnocide. Our time is now.” 

Image

Celia's victory is the result of a collective effort by the indigenous movement to expand the number of candidates from native peoples and occupy institutional politics, which was called 'Bancada do Cocar'. In opposition to the ruralist caucus, this front emerges from the perspective of stopping attacks on the environment and focusing on the demarcation of territories and the defense of the rights of forest peoples.

“We don't want to be just voters. We are also in a position to be voted on and we are going to make that Green Room a reforestation of politics with our ideas and our presence”, she says. 

One of the main challenges she wants to overcome is precisely the 'racism of absence', that is, the mistaken idea that the indigenous person's place is only in the village or in a “handicraft stall”.

“They decided this was the place for us and we decided to go with our headdress. [Now], it's opening the way, because together with us, I want many others to come”.

Célia Xakriabá takes office in the hope of sowing hope and reconstruction after an intensification of attacks on indigenous peoples, which were placed in the sights of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the National Congress itself. 

Image

Hence, your mandate prioritizes three pillars, all built collectively with the indigenous and traditional communities of Minas Gerais: living culture, with the strengthening of policies for preserving memory and cultural heritage and democratizing access to culture; territorialized education, with recognition of the ancestral wisdom and ethnic-racial literacy of professionals in basic education; and socio-environmental justice, with demarcation of Indigenous Lands and titling of quilombola territories, fighting predatory mining and agrarian and urban reforms.  

“[The Bolsonaro government] used the power structure to announce the 'pass of the cattle'. How are we going to think about the possibility of the future if there is an ecocidal government at the center of politics?” question. “It is time to resume a democracy for life”.

Pointing to a possible Lula government, she also reinforces the need to think about stopping normative acts that promote environmental and territorial regression and disrespect for the rights of indigenous peoples, which, she estimates, already reach 250 texts. And he guarantees that, if this prospect of a new government by the ex-president takes place, he will remain vigilant within Congress.

“It will be a mandate for the fight”, he points out. “Our representation does not mean that the problems will be solved. On the contrary: we will have a voice and a possibility of decision with the pen, but mobilization is what sustains us”. 

My school is the fight

Institutional politics are already part of Célia Xakriabá's life. For the last four years, she has worked as a parliamentary advisor to federal deputy Áurea Carolina (PSOL), elected by Minas Gerais in 2018. Before, she had worked at the Minas Gerais Department of Education, where she collaborated with the design of public policies for differentiated school education. and with the opening of indigenous and quilombola and rural schools throughout the state. 

Image

It was Áurea, in fact, who first called on the Xakriabá leaders to launch a candidacy for the Federal Chamber, still in the 2018 election. Célia recalls, however, that it was not yet the moment. 

Thinking about the 2022 elections, the Xakriabá began to discuss the fact that many of the parliamentarians they helped to elect did not have the interests of the people as their true priorities. Some voted, for example, in favor of mining or against indigenous health policies.

They then decided that the time had come to unify around a name that truly represented them. And that name was Celia's. 

“The indigenous territories supported our candidacy and many of the quilombola communities in Minas Gerais [as well]. In Belo Horizonte alone, I was the third most voted. People are understanding our emergency”, comments the elected deputy. 

In 2023, Célia Xakriabá will carry to Brasília a bag filled with her vast experience in the area of ​​education and engagement with the indigenous movement. “I never followed the paths of the old Brazilian politics. My first school was and remains the struggle,” she reaffirms. 

Célia has always been very present in the political life of the territory and established her first relationships with the struggle with other peoples and traditional communities in the north of Minas Gerais. The proximity and exchange of experiences with quilombola, geraizeiros, ebb and other territories later flowed into the Rosalino Gomes Articulation of Traditional Peoples and Communities. 

Image

She also remembers that she always studied in indigenous schools, and through them, she created a strong relationship with the territory and with the cultural roots of her people. The experience with differentiated education is the reason to become an educator. 

Célia was part of the first group of the Intercultural Training Course for Indigenous Educators at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and, after graduating, returned to the Xakriabá territory to work as a Culture teacher. “It's important to think about a territorialized education, where our bodies move to other places [beyond the classroom],” she says. “And so is politics for me too: parliament moving to where the struggle is. And I intend to do just that.” 

Later, Célia became the first teacher of her people, specializing in Sustainable Development at the University of Brasília (UnB), and the first indigenous woman to enter her doctorate at UFMG. 

Pioneering spirit is a motivation to keep fighting. “We don't feel happier about being the only ones. We have a redoubled responsibility,” she says. 

Womanize politics

When she was young, Célia liked to observe the women of her people and question in what ways they were contributing to the collective struggle of the Xakriabá. The answers she received showed that women still did not have a major role and notoriety within the indigenous movement, but they had always been essential for the social organization of the people. 

“They used to say: 'the only thing I had to do was clear the fields to support my children and also support the culture'”, he recalls. “These are women who become protagonists when they perceive themselves as pillars. So, the pestle that crushes the corn not only feeds the children, but sustains the territory,” she writes in her Masters dissertation. 

Image

“And then suddenly I start to rethink this place of what politics is”, he comments. Looking around her, she noticed, for example, that her uncle's companion did not make decisions in the center of the village, but guided her husband from within the house. She also realized the potency of the work of her great-grandmother, who was a faith healer, and of her aunts, midwives. “Who said that bringing to life in a traditional, humanized way is not doing politics? I understand politics when people are participating, talking."

It is precisely this history that she intends to bring to Congress, in an effort to "womanize" politics, an old commitment that she also strengthens through the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestry (Anmiga), which he helped to found. 

“Brazil starts with us, but we didn't have a presence there,” he says. She hopes to continue the legacy of joenia wapichana, who failed to be reelected in 2022, and for that, he has the support and strength of his colleague in the indigenous movement on the headdress bench, Sonia Guajajara. 

Although it may seem small to have only two elected, Célia guarantees that the presence of two indigenous women aligned with the collective agendas of the movement in the Chamber has a different meaning, with great power. “It's not about how many people [are there], it's about how many would die if we had our arms crossed,” she points out. "And if we're a minority on the inside, we'll call a majority on the outside!"