With 23 votes, the indigenous writer and environmental activist Ailton Krenak was elected in October to the Brazilian Academy of Letters, or ABL. He is the first indigenous person to occupy a seat in the academy, taking over chair number five, which belonged to José Murilo de Carvalho, who passed away in August of this year. Competing with Krenak were historian Mary del Priore and fellow indigenous writer Daniel Munduruku, who received 12 and four votes, respectively.
The president of the ABL, Merval Pereira, stated that Krenak is a poet with “a very unique worldview that is appropriate for this moment — when the world is concerned about the environment and native peoples are fighting for their rights. All of this is part of Krenak’s victory in the Academy. He is an indigenous person who works with indigenous culture, valuing oral tradition.”
Merval Pereira cited Krenak’s book Futuro ancestral, which addresses the preservation of rivers as a way to conserve the future. “The rivers were already here before we arrived. This vision of nature, of man alongside nature, is what we are reinforcing with this great indigenous writer and intellectual.”
The academic Rosiska Darcy described Krenak’s election as historic. “Not only for the Academy but for Brazil, there is no better substitute for a great historian than the embodied history that is Krenak. Krenak today embodies a crucial part of Brazil’s history. I am truly happy with his election,” she said.
Activism
Ailton Krenak was born in 1953 in the region of the Doce River Valley, in the state of Minas Gerais, home to the Krenak people, a place affected by mineral extraction activities. Krenak is an activist for the socio-environmental movement and a champion of indigenous rights. He is Commander of the Order of Cultural Merit of the Presidency and holds honorary doctorates from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the Federal University of Juiz de Fora.
Krenak organized the Alliance of Forest Peoples, which brings together riverside and indigenous communities of the Amazon, and contributed to the creation of the Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI). He co-signed the proposal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that created the Serra do Espinhaço Biosphere Reserve in 2005 and is a member of its management committee.
In the 1970s and 80s, he played a decisive role in the Indigenous Peoples Chapter, the eighth chapter of the 1988 Constitution, which guarantees indigenous people rights to culture and land. His most recent books include Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo (2019), A vida não é útil (2020), and Futuro ancestral (2022).
In A vida não é útil, he addresses the COVID-19 pandemic and states: “If for a time it was us, the indigenous peoples, who were threatened with the rupture or extinction of the meaning of our lives, today we are all on the brink of the Earth being unable to bear our demands.”
Source: Agência Brasil