Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
However, there are Whites who say: “You aren't Indian, you're black!” So
the discrimination is doubled. To me, what's important isn't the color of your
skin, it is blood. I feel pride to say who I am, a Pankararu Indian. This type of
workshop here today empowers the people because it makes us proud to be
who we are, because it values our knowledge.
Presentation of Krenak knowledge by Lidiane Oliveira (Vanuire Indigenous Land)
How am I going to talk about mathematics if our people was massacred in
the 1960s and there are only a few Krenak individuals left? When you kill a
people, you kill knowledge as well. So I need to explain how this happened.
As we almost went extinct, our mathematics almost disappeared, too. Many
anthropologists have helped us rescue our culture, writing topics about us. But
it is a sad, sad history that many elders don't like to tell because of all the
suffering. And this history has not ended yet, because our children suffer a lot
of discrimination in the public schools today.
In the 1960s when our people still spoke the Krenak language, they were beaten
up. If they didn't wear clothes, they were beaten up. If they did anything that
seemed to be “Indian,” they were beaten up. So, how can knowledge survive?
How can a people survive these conditions? We suffer until today.
Our God put us on this earth not for us to destroy it, like White men do.
Something that hurts us very much is to see a river that was clean, a forest that
was green, not exist anymore. We try to pass on the idea that the Indian was the
guardian of the land. Have you ever heard that before the Whites arrived here,
there were any industries? We don't have any more fish or game animals on
our land. This world is ending because of pollution. There are people here at
this meeting that don't have land, that live in a matchbox. The real
brasileiros
are us, long before you.
Presentation of Kaingang knowledge by Ilson Iaiati (Icatu Indigenous Land)
Our case is similar to that of the Terena and the Krenak. We are trying to rescue
Kaingang knowledge that was lost years ago. So I will tell a little of the history
of how the Kaingang lived before, starting with the Kiki Festival.
Kiki is a drink that the Kaingang used to drink in order to dance. There wasn't
cachaça
[sugar cane rum] then. Each person had to look for firewood and
coconut flowers to make Kiki. White men didn't invent alcohol, Indians did.
The Kaingang danced and sang the whole night drinking Kiki to push away
bad spirits. Those that couldn't keep up went to sleep and only continued the
next night. But these are things of the past because the train tracks that now
pass through the West in the Bauru region brought an end to my people. It was
terrible, the white men electrified the road and many Indians were burned to
death.
