A pioneer of Indigenous literature in Brazil discusses the vital role of this movement in preserving both territories and worldviews.

Over the last 30 years, the emergence of contemporary Indigenous literature in Brazil has become a fundamental act of re-existence. While the preservation of Indigenous Peoples’ territorial rights remains the most visible aspect of their struggle in Brazil, this fight would be incomplete without defending their intangible heritage. Their worldviews, their symbols, their ancestral knowledge. In this realm, the flourishing of Indigenous literature plays a vital role.

Our guest for this episode, Kaká Werá, stands as one of the pioneers and most influential voices in this movement. A writer, educator, and public speaker, he has dedicated over three decades to preserving and sharing Indigenous traditional knowledge. Author of 16 books, including award-winning works like the “Land of 1000 Peoples” and “Thunder-Boy”, his work has been crucial both in strengthening Indigenous communities, and helping non-Indigenous society recognize the fundamental value of cultural diversity.

We had the privilege of speaking with Kaká during FOLIO, the Óbidos International Literary Festival, where he presented his latest book, “Tekoá: The Art of Good Living”, a work that distills the ancestral Tupi Guarani philosophy of living well. During the festival, we also joined him for a round table discussion on World Configurations, exploring how Indigenous worldviews can shape our imagination of possible futures. Our conversation not only traces his literary journey, but also offers deep insights into how ancient Indigenous wisdom can light the way forward through humanity’s contemporary challenges.

Play the video version below (English subtitles available), or scroll down for the podcast version (dubbed in English) and for the transcript (in English).

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ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT (TRANSLATION)

INDIGENOUS LITERATURE | IMMATERIAL TERRITORIES | RE-EXISTENCE

Indigenous literature in Brazil, written literature, first began as an act of re-existence. What does that mean? In Brazil, since a long time ago, since colonization, we have been considered peoples without culture, without knowledge. And this idea was reinforced for centuries. And for some time now, my generation in particular, and the generation before mine, we’ve realized that we have to fight for what I call immaterial territory, as much as we fight to recover our material territories.

Material territories are important to guarantee our survival and sustainability. But immaterial territories, which are made up of worldviews, of our own symbols, meanings, beliefs, and perceptions, these immaterial territories have been undermined. And a worldview has been imposed on us, which is not only destructive for us, it’s a destructive worldview for humanity. Non-indigenous society itself is questioning its paradigms.

So Indigenous literature is an opportunity for us to make ourselves known, when it comes to this territory made of worldviews, philosophies and knowledge, and an opportunity to reveal, to non-Indigenous society, these perceptions, which we see as necessary to the process of making humanity more appreciative of cultural differences.

There is a bias that runs through the paradigm of non-indigenous society, whereby it aims to homogenize everything. That is to say, it strives to make the entire realm of culture uniform. Whereby the same food is eaten, the same language is spoken, and the whole world lives in the same way. And that actually imposes limits. Because that isn’t natural. Both biological nature and human nature are diverse. And it is from this diversity that rich experiences are created, that true wealth is generated.

So Indigenous literature comes in to offer this diversity. Even philosophical diversity. Why not? And to tell the world that this idea that we lack culture was an invention, an unsuccessful invention.

So, in Brazil, this movement is just over 30 years old. But today, there are more than 160 indigenous writers, from 58 ethnic groups. And that, somehow, is gaining expression, little by little, in society. Revealing that, besides being an art and way to take part, it is also a way of promoting our re-existence.

In Brazil, over the last 30 years, from the 1980s onwards, or the end of the 1980s, when the first authors began to emerge, authors who are now considered foundational, such as Eliane Potiguara, Daniel Munduruku, Ailton Krenak, who recently joined the Brazilian Academy of Letters, an important institution of Brazilian literature, I, and other colleagues, these pioneering authors also encouraged new generations to write, and to become writers.

So, as a starting point to get to know Indigenous literature, I suggest the classics, let’s put it this way, our so-called classics. Authors such as Daniel Munduruku, Ailton Krenak, Eliane Potiguara. But I also recommend younger writers, who have become very relevant, like Cristino Wapichana. Cristino Wapichana has been here, in Óbidos, as well, to present his work. He’s part of this new generation of authors. For example, he won the Peter Pan award for children’s literature, which is one of the most important international awards in literature. These are the authors I would start with.

And in my case, some books are considered emblematic. One of them is called “The Land of the 1000 Peoples”. It’s a book that the University of Coimbra, together with the University of São Paulo, elected as one of the 200 essential books to understand Brazil.

And there is also my most recent book, which came out this year, called “Tekoá: The Art of Living Well”. I consider it an important book. Not just because it’s the most recent book, the one that is now being released. But because it presents an overview of the ancestral philosophy found in the Tupi Guarani tradition. I suggest these authors to start with.

As a result of this rise in the number of Indigenous authors over the last 30 years, the Oceanos Institute, which is behind an important award focused on literature written in Portuguese, from Brazil, Portugal and African countries, has promoted the creation of a platform to showcase Indigenous literature through various exhibitions. And these exhibitions have been taking place in several Brazilian states since last year.

And this project also aims – seeing that there is already such literary diversity – to catalogue Indigenous literature, and the Oceanos Institute is working on that aspect as well, and it is even looking for partners at the moment, to do so. This is a brand new project. And you can access information about this project at the website for Instituto Oceanos, or by directly contacting the Instituto. And this one of the most relevant opportunities at the moment, for us who are part of the Indigenous literature movement. We hope to build a kind of Indigenous Literature Observatory, making all this diversity available to society.

LIVING-WELL | TEKOÁ-PORÃ | TUPI GUARANI PHILOSOPHY

The philosophy of Living Well deals with certain principles that come from Andean cultures and from southern Brazil, from the Guarani, Aymara, Quechua and Mapuche cultures. These are cultures that have been in America for 12,000, 20,000 years. And, because of the social and ecological breakdown we are experiencing, and the serious risk they pose of destroying humanity, that’s why we are propagating these cultures.

The philosophy of Living Well is precisely about developing a different way of relating to what we eat and to how we live in a given place. It’s about considering, for example, multiculturalism as something crucial for generating wealth. When you look at a forest, it’s the diversity of species that generates a forest, not monocultures. That’s one aspect of it.

The second aspect is about the ways in which you access the resources of a given place. You don’t do it by indiscriminately exploiting them. It’s about carefully extracting what we need to live, preserving the necessary time these places need to re-establish themselves, to renew themselves.

And, finally, there are ideas related to ending the increase in air pollution, to how we can stop poisoning the Earth and polluting the waters, to how we put an end to wars. At the moment, there are more than 50 wars going on in the world. This is because the world is said to be civilized. The news sometimes shows us two or three bruising wars. But in reality, there are more than 50 wars going on. And we are living in an age, it’s 2024 as we record, when we are supposed to have the intelligence, the technology, the knowledge and the education to develop experiences of coexistence. And we haven’t learned that yet. Learning to live together is our challenge.

SLEEP AND DREAMS | EXPANSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS | IMMATERIAL LIFE

Non-Indigenous society has an understanding of sleep, for example, which is more based on a biological understanding. And its understanding of dreams, of the dimension of dreams, is also more neurological. Society sees sleep and dreams as complements to certain states of the organism or the body, while it rests and as it regains consciousness.

For Indigenous Peoples, sleep is the preparation for a journey. Within the material dimension of our life, we spend practically a third of it dreaming. We need dreams to rejuvenate us, to renew us, that’s true. But for Indigenous Peoples, this one third of life is actually also an opportunity to experience consciousness on other planes, in other dimensions of life.

Sleeping and dreaming do not simply have physiological effects. Sleeping and dreaming are portals for our soul, for our being, to access experiences that complement those of material life. In the dimension of dreaming, for example, we can connect with other relatives, other beings within these other dimensions. We can share impressions, and we can even learn things.

In Brazil, I often say that many of the things that the Tupi tradition includes in daily life, in terms of cooking, food, medicines, herbs, directions of where to go, where to be, all these come from this dimension of dreams.

There are certain foods that in Brazil are already considered traditional foods, and which came from Indigenous Peoples’ traditions, for example manioc, guaraná, corn, and all of these are ancestral foods that became known through dreams, as were the ways in which to use their roots or seeds.

Dreams are an opportunity to expand consciousness. In the Guarani tradition, which is a tradition that I have lived with for a long time, we live in certain places after we dream that we should move there. The Guarani tradition has a long history of journeying, of searching, of living in places that are suitable for life. And these places are revealed in dreams.

Another aspect, for example, is related to how spiritual the Guarani tradition is. It’s a tradition that considers all of life to be an experience of the sacred. For the Guarani transition, it’s fundamental that the sacred is recognized in every place and in all things. And one of the ways of achieving this recognition is through chanting. It’s through what we call inhaporã, which are songs, poems. And the source of these songs and poems were dreams. The verses of these songs have been dreamt since time immemorial.

Because it is believed that this dimension of dreams allows us to engage with other beings that are part of nature. Tree spirits, animal spirits. And that is different from what happens in this material dimension, where language barriers characterise our relationships with other beings.

So there is a vastness of perception related to dreams, which is part of Indigenous traditions in general, and which differs greatly from the understanding of sleep and dreams among non-Indigenous society. For example, sleeping, going through the process of sleep, is incredibly important, because it is a path of renewal for the soul and it is where our soul is nourished. If we don’t sleep properly, we don’t think properly, we don’t feel properly. In our waking state, our perception, our sense of perception, diminishes a lot, it limits us greatly. So these are some themes which we feel our perspective can illuminate.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND PORTUGAL | STEREOTYPES | SHARING WORLDVIEWS

To be honest, I don’t have much of a reference, when it comes to the way that Portuguese people look at Brazil or at Indigenous Peoples. I’ve been here once before, last year, and I received a very warm welcome from the locals, from the Portuguese, and that was during a literary festival.

But I often hear that the opinions of the Portuguese here are not very different from that of the average Brazilian. In both cases, when it comes to Indigenous Peoples, to the figure of the Indigenous citizen, their views are based on stereotypes, on distorted ideas.

One of those distorted ideas is that Indigenous Peoples lack culture, they lack knowledge. And the other distorted idea is that, in Brazil, the lands that are being disputed are too big for small Indigenous communities.

But I can’t say for sure if these are the only references. However, – and I think this is important, this openness in Óbidos, for example – it is necessary to bring our worldviews, our outlooks here.

And this invitation, not just to me, but to other relatives, to be able to share with Portuguese society in particular about our worldviews, our concerns, our issues, that really helps us to come closer. And it helps us open up possibilities for more propositional interactions.