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

Célia, 19 years later, a member of the Socialist Party (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 over 101 votes. Starting in 2023, she will take a seat in the Chamber alongside four other self-identified Indigenous parliamentarians, a record, notably Sonia Guajajara, also from PSOL, who was chosen to represent the State of São Paulo.

"We've come this far because we've decided that others won't tell us when it's our time," she emphasizes. "Our time is when we can no longer tolerate genocide and ethnocide. Our time is now." 

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Célia's victory is the result of a collective effort by the indigenous movement to expand the number of candidates representing indigenous peoples and occupy institutional politics, which they dubbed the "Cocar Caucus." Opposed to the ruralist caucus, this movement emerged with the goal of blocking attacks on the environment and advocating for the demarcation of territories and the defense of the rights of forest peoples.

"We don't want to just be voters. We also have the potential to be voted for, and we're going to make that Green Room a political reforestation with our ideas and our presence," he says. 

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

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

Célia Xakriabá takes office hoping to sow hope and reconstruction after an intensification of attacks on indigenous peoples, who have been targeted by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and the National Congress itself. 

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

"[The Bolsonaro government] used its power structure to announce the 'passing of the herd.' How can we think about the possibility of the future if there's an ecocidal government at the political center?" he asks. "It's time to restore a democracy for life."

Pointing to a possible Lula administration, she also reinforces the need to consider halting regulatory acts that promote environmental and territorial regression and disrespect for the rights of indigenous peoples, which, she estimates, already number 250. And she guarantees that, should this prospect of a new administration under the former president come to fruition, she will remain vigilant within Congress.

"It will be a mandate to fight," he emphasizes. "Our representation doesn't mean the problems will be solved. On the contrary: we will have a voice and the ability to make decisions with the pen, but mobilization is what sustains us." 

My school is the fight

Institutional politics is already a part of Célia Xakriabá's life. For the past four years, she has served as a parliamentary advisor to Federal Deputy Áurea Carolina (PSOL), elected by Minas Gerais in 2018. Previously, she worked at the Minas Gerais Department of Education, where she collaborated on the design of public policies for differentiated schooling and the opening of Indigenous, Quilombola, and rural schools throughout the state. 

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

With the 2022 elections in mind, the Xakriabá began to discuss the fact that many of the parliamentarians they helped elect didn't truly prioritize the people's interests. 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 Célia. 

"The Indigenous territories supported our candidacy, as did many of the quilombola communities in Minas Gerais. In Belo Horizonte alone, I received the third most votes. People are understanding our emergency," comments the elected representative. 

In 2023, Célia Xakriabá will bring to Brasília a wealth of experience in education and engagement with the Indigenous movement. "I never followed the path of traditional Brazilian politics. My first school was and continues to be the struggle," she reaffirms. 

Célia was always very present in the territory's political life and established her first relationships through the struggle with other traditional peoples and communities in northern Minas Gerais. The proximity and exchange of experiences with quilombola, geraizeiro, vazanteiro, and other territories later led to the Rosalino Gomes Articulation of Traditional Peoples and Communities. 

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She also recalls that she always studied in Indigenous schools, and through them, she developed a strong connection with the territory and the cultural roots of her people. The experience with differentiated education motivated her to become an educator. 

Célia was part of the first class 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 that's how politics works for me: parliament moving to where the struggle is. And I intend to do exactly that." 

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

Pioneering is a motivation to keep fighting. "We're no longer happy just because we're the only ones. We have a double responsibility," she says. 

Womanizing politics

When she was young, Célia enjoyed observing the women of her people and asking how they were contributing to the collective struggle of the Xakriabá. The responses she received demonstrated that women still lacked significant prominence and notoriety within the indigenous movement, but they had always been essential to the people's social organization. 

"They said, 'The only thing I had to do was clear the land to support my children and also sustain the culture,'" she recalls. "These are women who become protagonists by seeing themselves as pillars. So, the pestle that crushed the corn not only fed the children, but also sustained the land," she writes in her Masters dissertation. 

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"And then suddenly I started rethinking this place of what politics is," she comments. Looking around, she noticed, for example, that her uncle's partner didn't make decisions in the village center, but guided her husband from inside the home. She also realized the power of the work of her great-grandmother, who was a healer, and her aunts, midwives. "Who said that bringing life in a traditional, humanized way isn't politics? I understand politics when people are participating, dialoguing."

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

“Brazil begins with us, but we didn’t have a presence there,” she says. She hopes to continue the legacy of Joenia Wapichana, who was unable to be reelected in 2022, and for this, he relies on the support and strength of his colleague in the indigenous movement in the Cocar bench, Sonia Guajajara. 

While having only two elected representatives may seem small, Célia assures that the presence of two Indigenous women aligned with the movement's collective agenda in the Chamber has a different meaning, one of great power. "It's not about how many people [are there], but how many would die if we stood idly by," she points out. "And if we are a minority on the inside, we will summon the majority on the outside!"