Racism prevents more indigenous people from entering politics, says elected deputy in MG

Starting in 2023, the National Congress will have a greater number of elected candidates who declared themselves indigenous – there are seven in total. One of them will be Célia Xakriabá (PSOL-MG), 32, who won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies after receiving 101,154 votes on Sunday (2).

She, who won the vacancy in the wake of an unprecedented mobilization, says that the biggest obstacle for indigenous people in institutional politics is to overcome what she calls “absence racism” — the white man’s view that “indigenous people’s place is in the village “.

“But what will it be like in the village if there are territorial conflicts? We decided that we will go to this place too [da política institucional]but it’s not just about arriving anyway, we’re building our ‘arrival'”, he tells Sheet.

Xakriabá will oppose the ruralist caucus, against which he recognizes that he is at a disadvantage in the correlation of forces, and hopes to be able to curb environmental impact agendas. It accounts for at least 250 projects currently in progress.

Institutional policy is not entirely foreign to her, who was coordinator of indigenous education in Minas Gerais and worked in the office of federal deputy Áurea Carolina (Psol-MG). Master in Sustainable Development at UNB and doctoral student in Anthropology at UFMG, she defends that village schools have a high degree of autonomy.

And he says that his support for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) against Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the second round of the elections will not be a blank check.

“Bolsonaro chose indigenous peoples as enemy number one […]but it is important to say that, if a Lula government comes, we will demand it”, he adds.

Why did the indigenous movement change its stance of hesitating to enter institutional politics? In fact, there have always been indigenous candidacies, but they were sometimes invisible. We’ve decided that we’re going to this place too [da política institucional], but it’s not just about arriving anyway, we’re building our ‘arrival’. We understand that power is not only the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary. Struggle is the fourth power. Our mandate is an instrument to strengthen the struggle for the redemocratization of the land and not to die of an ecocide, of a legislated genocide, where people use the pen to kill us.

It is important to be in the National Congress to provoke and build other governance processes. The white man governs with a coat, we are going to govern with the strength of genipap and annatto, we are going to womanize and indigenize politics. It is urgent to occupy and reforest the green room with our bodies, because the green there is monocultural, and we understand that all monoculture kills.

What prevents more indigenous people from entering institutional politics? Racism. People think our headdress is beautiful, but they say that ‘the place of an indigenous person is in the bush, in the village’. But how, if there are territorial conflicts in the village? Even though we are not even 1% of the Brazilian population, we protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity, according to the UN, which also said that indigenous people are the main solution to climate change. If we are good at this, we are more than good at taking care of the Plateau. However, we need to overcome this racism of absence.

Is it possible to stand up to the benches that defend, for example, mining? I have always learned in the territory that democracy is not about listening to the majority, it is about listening to everyone. Our bench grew along with the bench of progressive parties. When we talk about a climate emergency, we are even talking to our enemies in relation to environmental issues. So, even though the ruralist caucus is larger in Congress, for economic interests, we have to keep doing the counterpoint, because if people are really worried about the economy, the ecosystem will cost more dearly to humanity.

People need to think about an economic transition and we are the last generation that can do something to stop climate change. If people don’t listen to indigenous peoples now, the chances are going to end for us, for them, for the next generations and for the planet.

What have indigenous peoples lost after more than four years without new land demarcations? We lost leaders. In 2019, 135 leaders were murdered. In 2020, 185. Whoever has territory has a place to return, has a mother, has a lap and has a cure. A people’s existence is threatened when it does not have the guarantee of its territory, because it is not just a question of living, but of maintaining our identity. It is not a language that sustains the territory, but the territory that sustains a language and a tradition. But in addition to thinking about the damage to us indigenous peoples, we have to think about the damage to humanity. Because where there is indigenous territory, there is standing forest.

What changes for indigenous peoples in the event of an election for Lula or Bolsonaro? Bolsonaro chose us, indigenous peoples, as his number one enemy, saying that he would not demarcate an inch of land; that was when territorial conflicts quadrupled. But it is important to say that, if a Lula government comes, we will demand it. There is a commitment to create the Indigenous Ministry, but it is important that it is presided over by indigenous people and that we have the autonomy to form the ministry.

And that’s not enough, Funai [Fundação Nacional do Índio] it is important, it is important to have indigenous people in the environment as well. We understand that we need to have these places of autonomy within a public policy project.

And autonomy in indigenous education, which is one of your main goals? We fight for a differentiated and territorialized education. It’s not about capturing knowledge for the school. In Minas Gerais, we created a specific curriculum organization for all indigenous schools, each part of the reality of each indigenous people: Xakriabá, Maxakali, Xukuru Kariri, Pataxó.

It is urgent to advance for a science that is the transformation of consciousness, an education that is not violent, that does not simply reproduce that who discovered Brazil was Pedro Álvares Cabral, that is committed to the teaching of indigenous and black culture and history, and that textbooks also reflect this diversity. Every monoculture kills, including thought.

Do you defend a separation between the white man’s school and the indigenous school? If children today are disinterested in education, it is because education needs to dialogue with life. Indigenous peoples need a taming of the school, which came to us as something colonizing. Our calendar doesn’t have Carnival, it doesn’t have Sete de Setembro. The school needs to recognize the presence and the way of organizing life in the village, where the calendar follows the times of drought and water. It is the elders who decide the calendar.

At the same time, basic education, for example, will not change, but we have to recognize what other people bring as knowledge, not lose the ability to read other science, to read traditional science and our ancestral science. We struggle to indigenize thought, to understand the importance of indigenous epistemologies as a healing tool.

Celia Xakriabá, 32

Indigenous from the village of Barro Preto, in the north of Minas Gerais, she has a master’s degree in Sustainable Development from UNB and a PhD student in Anthropology from UFMG. She worked in the office of federal deputy Áurea Carolina (PSOL-MG)

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}