WHO AM I
Indigenous activist, indigenous activist. Perhaps this pair of words arranged in this pun is the best way to start introducing myself. I'm Shirley Djukurnã Krenak, a native woman from the Brazilian land. Since I was 13 years old, I have responded to Mother Earth's call to be a representative of indigenous rights and, above all, to fight for the preservation of the environment and ancestral spirituality. Today, at the age of 40, I dedicate myself in body and soul to the struggle of indigenous women, something inherited from my traditional name, Djukurnã: a woman always willing, because she is the bearer of the spirit that never grows old.
I belong to the Krenak indigenous people, located on the banks of the Watú (Rio Doce), in the east of the state of Minas Gerais. Much of my traditional knowledge was learned through the wisdom of my father, Waldemar Itchó Itchó Krenak, around a bonfire on the banks of the Rio Doce, our sacred relative. My people, perhaps, was the main paradigm in the history of the European invasion and of the religious expansion on the so-called “faithless, lawless and kingless” peoples. Declared enemies of the colony, cornered and enslaved in the Empire, expelled from traditional lands and imprisoned in the Republic, the Krenak were the field of experimentation for the arrogance of Western reason, which in its eagerness to “discover” the exotic let the spirit suffer, leaving the body that wanders aimlessly on mother earth. Since Prince Maximilian Alexander Philipp zu Wied-Neuwied and Curt Nimuendajú, the culture of my people has been the subject of usurpation: they took our bodies, skulls, sacred artifacts and even Krenak individuals to the old world. As my brothers and I say, if our people still persist in endless resistance, it is because our act of existing implies daily resistance. However, this history of violence only composes notes of the work of my work, because against the hatred of the white man, I present the cure for indigenous ancestry.
WHAT WE DO
The work in the national indigenous movement and towards non-indigenous society is developed with a complexity that only traditional knowledge is capable of simplifying. Even before the terminology “human right to education” was disseminated locally, I was already inserted in regional schools to teach, tell and present indigenous culture to non-indigenous people. Today, my insertion in schools reaches not only the city of Governador Valadares (MG), but also Belo Horizonte and many others. Still in this context, I realized, along with many partners, that the way the kraí (whites) treat their peers was inhumane. So, I started work at the prison center for young people in conflict with the law, who were getting sick and dying, cloistered in the hard and cold concrete walls of the Centro Socioeducativo São Francisco de Assis. I tried to bring the love of the yupú (mother) to young people, children and adolescents, and with that to show that indigenous culture is far from being backward: it is the future of humanity.
Still a little restless, at the beginning of the 2010s, I started to act in the so-called “cause indigenous” within universities. As an educator and pedagogical coordinator, I am part of the NAGÔ Agroecology Center and the Human Rights Reference Center, both linked to the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. In these spaces, institutional actors they function as mediators of the work developed by me alongside their brothers. These activities are courses focused on the history and indigenous culture of the state of Minas Gerais, highlighting traditional knowledge and medicinal plants applied to the cure of the ills that plague non-indigenous people.
All these projects and works with education consolidated year after year made me have contact with more than 1,000 children and adolescents from public and private schools. In 2018 and 2019, actions carried out at NAGÔ involved 1728 people from 54 municipalities in MG, ES, RJ and SP, including family farmers, agrarian reform settlers, quilombolas, indigenous people, students, teachers, technicians, researchers, extension workers, health professionals , traditional therapists, artists and popular educators. In addition, these partnerships with higher education institutions led me to act as a supervisor for academic master's and doctoral works, breaking the boundary between researcher-interlocutor.
In the national and international indigenous movement, I have to assume my face as a Krenak warrior. Along with many other indigenous women, such as Sônia Guajajara and Célia Xakriabá, I coordinate the march of indigenous women, which takes thousands of women to Brasília to protest against the genocide carried out by the Brazilian state. With the support of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), it works as a partner in the struggle for the realization of rights
indigenous human rights, guaranteed by international instruments and the Brazilian Constitution, but which are gradually relaxed by the national judiciary and executive. On many occasions, I have occupied and demanded attitudes from Minister Cármen Lúcia, former president the Federal Supreme Court, the national legislature and many other official bodies.
Since 2004, I have been part of the construction and coordination of one of the largest indigenous movements in the world, the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL). In the year 2020, prevented from physically occupying the lands of the capital of Brazil, they reinvented themselves in the face of the state of emergency by demarcating their online presence. Tirelessly, I participated and organized one of the biggest movements in a webnar that reached countless people in Brazil through its online transmission. We, indigenous peoples, said to be backwards, were able to think about our condition and phagocytize the technologies of the white man and reverse them in the fight for rights that are summarized in guaranteeing indigenous peoples to be culturally differentiated and respected.
Respect for native peoples is a demand that I carry internationally, participating in numerous meetings on traditionality and on the struggle to preserve mother earth. I am part of the lending team of the Kiva dialogue network (2018-2019), which annually brings together numerous cultural and religious traditions from around the world; participated in congresses to address the issue of structural racism against indigenous people in Germany (2018); I was part of the “Roots of the Earth” network in the Netherlands (2018-2019); I participated in the Emergency Forum on Indigenous Cultural Heritage in the Brazilian Amazon in Spain (2019); I participated in the event “Visions of the indigenous peoples of Brazil” in Italy and Germany (2018), where I could have contact with numerous children from the Tellkampf school and made a presentation at the University of Leibniz; among many other congresses and events where you can expose the political struggle of my people and the protagonism of indigenous women in Brazil.
In one of these opportunities for international dialogue, my people requested the recovery of the remains of their relative Kuêk, taken by Prince Maximilian Wied in the 19th century. XIX. The German government and the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Bonn carried out the return in 2015, where I was present in the city of Jequitinhonha (MG) alongside the Consul General of Germany, Dr. Michael Worbs, and the director of the museum at the University of Bonn, Prof. Karl Schilling. This path that I have traced is not only the need to guarantee my existence and that of my people, but it is a struggle for the resurgence of the Krenak culture, heavily attacked over the years by non-indigenous people.
However, as you may know, the history of the Krenak people is marked by violence that seems to have no end. In November 2015, the world was faced with the biggest environmental crime in the history of Brazil with the rupture of the dam of the mining company Samarco SA, controlled by Vale SA and BHP Group. This crime, which spilled more than 50 million m3 of tailings into the Rio Doce, marks the history of many people, but for my Krenak people the coup was
deeper: they killed their relative Watú, as we call the Rio Doce. This event even aroused modes of indigenous resistance in the face of the degree of human rights violations. Prevented from performing our rituals by the river, as was all my learning, now my people are forced to fight against the big mining companies. In this context, I have been playing an important role in denouncing the crime of Samarco/Vale/BHP and in defending indigenous rights, constitutionally guaranteed but disrespected on a daily basis. That is why,
my life changed completely, as I was forced to become a protagonist in the fight against mining companies, suffering various threats and harassment. However, if for non-indigenous people it was just a river, for my people it was a human being who protected us, a sacred entity. The struggle for survival has now assumed other proportions, but the Krenak people and I continue to resist endlessly the destruction of the world by non-indigenous people.
This whole complex of actions, activities, projects and events led me to implement an old idea discussed with my father, on the banks of the Watú. In an attempt to remain strong and resist the struggle for indigenous rights, it is necessary to institutionalize. Faced with the abandonment of official bodies, the Shirley Djukurnã Krenak Institute has recently emerged. It is a non-profit association whose purpose is to promote the
ethnodevelopment and indigenous education in schools and non-indigenous entities. The SDK Institute, coordinated by me, is the embodiment of more than 25 years of struggle by an indigenous woman activist, an indigenous woman activist. I hope that this initiative can add strength, as it aims to offer institutional support and be a space to focus actions and people committed to guaranteeing indigenous rights. However, Instituto SDK still faces problems in its implementation due to the lack of resources and incentives so that it can work as support and support in the
demands made by the indigenous movement.
But don't think that the indigenous struggle is made up of glories. The native blood bathes the Brazilian lands even today, however, it is not an ethnocide perpetrated by the European metropolises as it used to be. What is being gestated is the final offensive of the colonial ideology that persists in the thinking of Brazilian rulers. Therefore, I end this letter by saying that being an indigenous woman means being part of the whole healing process of Mother Earth. As a woman, I am defending the universe and the earth 24 hours a day. All of us indigenous women of the world, mainly from Brazil, came to this world to carry out missions. Missions that concern the protection not only of the earth, but of the human beings who step on it. This force that takes care of our body as an indigenous woman is the force of the earth, it is the force of the universe. This is being an indigenous woman, we were born activists. It is to be part of a fight for a land without evils.
Errré!