Krenak: literature can help propose new ways of living on Earth

Directly or indirectly, everyone is participating in the indiscriminate consumption of the planet. This is what writer and environmental activist Ailton Krenak (photo) believes. The indigenous leader, author of the books Ideas to postpone the end of the world and Ancestral futureamong others, states that everyone participates in the mess that is happening on the planet, since “we are the body of the Earth”.

“If you say that your hand is not to blame for what your foot does, you are considering the possibility of your foot moving without the help of your hand. There will be some kind of help. Even if it is indifference, a lack of response,” he emphasizes.

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Krenak does not take away responsibility from indigenous peoples. “Indigenous peoples tend to see themselves as children of the Earth. And I encourage my companions by saying: if she is our mother, how can you let people do this?” bullying with her? If she is our mother and they are preying on her, how about we go after these guys?” he suggests.

When speaking about the process he denounces as “eating the Earth,” the environmentalist cites, in his opinion, the three most visible expressions of destruction: mining, deforestation and oil exploration. Krenak believes there is no escape from the latter. Not even the most remote peoples.

Extractivism

For him, no one is left out of the extractivism determined by the choice of oil as an energy matrix. And which is present everywhere and in different versions.

“Did you know that your cell phone case is made of oil? That my sandals are probably made of oil? That your sneakers are made of oil? Your glasses, your cap?” he asks.

Krenak was the honored author of the second edition of the Paracatu International Literary Festival, which ended last Sunday (1st). Translated into more than 13 countries and immortalized by the Brazilian Academy of Letters, he stated that it is necessary to “have poetry in our experience of struggle”.

“I think that each of us should awaken our inner power and think about how to do it: whether it will be by producing more knowledge, producing art, writing, speaking, drawing, planting banana trees. Some people think that the way to do this is by planting forests, agroforestry; or by campaigning, taking care of water, protecting wildlife. Until yesterday, people thought that only humans thought. Today, we know that trees, fish, every living organism has science,” he assures.

Literature

In his latest release, “Kuján and the Know-it-all Boys,” Ailton Krenak writes for children. He explains that kujanin the Krenak language, means anteater. And the book tells a story of the creation of humanity so that children have another option of how we appeared on Earth, besides the Adam and Eve version.

The wise boys are two cultural heroes, to whom the creator teaches artifacts, body painting, and songs. By writing for children, Krenak places hope in other ways of living on the planet, in the little ones.

“We are thinking that there is still hope for other ways of living in the world. And the ones who can do this are children, because adults are already used to it. Adults are crazy about money, power, and disputes,” he argues.

Reader, Krenak defines the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade as his invisible shield. He says that the poet from Minas Gerais spent his life warning “that his village, Itabira (MG), had turned into a picture on the wall. In other words, the ground he walked on had collapsed.”

Quoting the poem “O homem; as viagems”, written by Drummond in 1973, Krenak points out that what is in the poem – man’s travels to inhabit other planets, the moon and the sun – can happen before man is willing to co-existas in the final verse.

“The simplest thing in existence would be for us to inhabit the Earth and just be content with living together. A friend said to me, ‘Ah! Krenak, but if there weren’t these things that we consider harmful and bad, we would end up in places where there would be nothing. You would arrive and there would be no electricity, no internet, no cars.’ I said, ‘But these are the things that are eating away at our world.’ It would be more or less like you going for a walk in a garden and complaining that there are no demons there.”

Meteor

The environmentalist also cites the work of Joca Reiners Terron, “Death and the meteor”, released in 2019. In the book, a dystopian world in which an Amazonian tribe is about to disappear due to the destruction of the forest.

Krenak believes that it is as if we “were living in a literature of prophecy in the modern era.” For him, some authors, when writing, are taken by such a powerful feeling that they are no longer writing literature, but rather prophesying, anticipating.

“We live in a time where creative people, poets have always been called antennas, have this ability to verbalize a tragedy that we want to avoid. The true meaning of literature that expresses its time is precisely to show everyone what they don’t want to see,” he argues.

The activist still believes that literature can be a place for proposing and searching for other ways of living with the Earth.

“It is to imagine the possibility of us inhabiting other worlds without leaving Earth. It is different from Drummond’s poem, in which humans want to leave Earth to go somewhere else. When he says co-existhe is saying that he will not have to learn to withstand the rocking of the canoe and ride the wave, to live here. We will have to live on Earth, there is no other place for humans to live. The physiological equipment that humans have, our anatomy, is only suitable for living on Earth”, he concludes.

*Reporter traveled at the invitation of the festival organization