Zahy Guajajara & Ailton Krenak

The forests are burning. In many places on this earth. The reason for it is a combination of climate change and ruthless land use. In the Brazilian Amazon region, the fires are threatening the most biodiverse forest and thus one of the biggest green lungs of the Earth. 

Born in the indigenous reserve of Cana Brava in Maranhão state, artist Zahy Guajajara now lives and works in Rio de Janeiro today. In Spring 2020, she developed the video performance «Pytuhem: Uma carta em defesa dos guardioes da floresta» (Pytuhem: A letter in defense of the guardians of the forest), an audiovisual manifesto which due to the corona pandemic had to be produced based on video calls between the director Mariana Villas-Bôas and Zahy Guajajara. She draws on her own life experiences and speaks of the struggles and resistance of the indigenous peoples in the Amazon region. She reports on a group of the Guajajara who fight for the conservation of the rainforest, about their community, their ancestors and rituals. These guardians of the forest also protect the Awa Guaja in the Arariboia reserve, who reject contact with western civilization and whose water and food reserves are threatened by increasing deforestation. Ailton Krenak, environmentalist and author of «Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo» (Ideas how to postpone the end of the world, 2019), is one of the most prominent indigenous thinkers of our time. He was born as a member of the Krenaki on the Rio Doce in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Over decades, he has campaigned for the rights of indigenous people to be included in the official constitution of his country. The indigenous cosmologies of America testify to many ends of the world. Krenak assigns the current environmental crisis to the sense of superiority of those who do not respect the land, rivers and forest in their intrinsic existence but exploit them as resources. Guajajara and Krenak will discuss the long history of an ecological connectedness with the environment and the obligation to fight for its conservation, pointing out that antifascist and antiracist movements must continue even in time of social and economic crisis and require international support. (mr)