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.

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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.  

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