On the verge of disappearing, the Yanomami are currently on international news because of their struggle to recover their health and heal from the trauma of having their land (and lives) invaded and poisoned by gold miners. Notwithstanding their struggle, and the struggle of hundreds indigenous tribes throughout Brazil since colonial times, and most recently under dictatorial and autocratic governments, the Indigenous groups resist e re-exist. This session brings forth a discussion on how the figure of the shaman helps to coincide the Indigenous thought with political resistance. Focused on Brazilian Indigenous literature and art, panelists will present a non-hegemonic, decolonial perspective on the environmental crisis and/or the cultural shock en lieu of cultural “encounters”.

In “Uncovering the ‘Discovery’: Pero Vaz de Caminha’s Letter (1500) and Davi Kopenawa’s The Falling Sky (2010), Francisco Quinteiro Pires explores the cultural frictions in the first contacts between Amerindians and nonindigenous people in the territory known today as Brazil. It focuses on the sensory descriptions of bodies and the environment in two crucial texts: Pero Vaz de Caminha’s Letter to King of Manuel I of Portugal, considered the birth certificate of Brazil, and Davi Kopenawa’s The Falling Sky. Caminha wrote a letter that provides a confounded portrayal of the Tupiniquim, which nonetheless contains the rhetorical strategies to justify the enslavement of indigenous people. Kopenawa, a Yanomami shaman, narrated in his book the impact of the ongoing process of colonization on indigenous perspectives and experiences. By examining and contrasting texts from different historic periods, Quinteiro Pires adopts the notion of a sensory lens to uncover the indigenous thought, based on shamanic dreams, reimagining forms of representation.

The falling Sky is also the object of study of Janaína Tatim, who proposes to highlight the critical understanding of Indigenous ecology. Based on the cosmo-epistemological paradigm of Yanomami shamanism through the voice of Davi Kopenawa. He is addressing the white, or non-indigenous, while focusing on ecology as an ethical paradigm to understand humanity in the world. In her presentation, Janaína Tatim will show that from the shaman’s viewpoint, it is necessary to shock the non-indigenous by means to incite an understanding of the Indigenous thought. The reader will then be able to re-evaluate the concept of “otherness”, vis-à-vis the human condition that is essentially an ecological condition, while confronting the non-hegemonic thought with the current climate crisis.

In “A ‘Counter Inventory’ of Life: Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe’s Yanomami Revisions of Colonial Natural Histories”, Benjamin Hulett examines Yanomami artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe’s paintings alongside images of Amazonian plants and animals cataloged in 18^th century European natural histories. Like European naturalists, Hakihiiwe presents his images against a stark white background. Yet how he express the lives of animals and plants differs significantly from the old documents. Natural histories from the 18^th century view life forms as potential commodities and objects accumulated to produce colonial knowledge. Hakihiiwe’s work, on the other hand, literally embodies ecological rhythms expressed in Yanomami aesthetics, cosmologies, and forest stewardship. From his visual repetition of partial bodies to his practice of making paper from Amazonian plant fibers, Hakihiiwe’s work translates Yanomami ways of thinking that disrupt the representations of specimens in colonial natural histories. Hulett argues that Hakihiiwe’s images, as well as their international circulation, attack colonial conceptions of bodies, life, and time that continue to authorize the ecocide of the Amazon rainforest and the ongoing genocide of the Yanomami people.

With the shamanist experience as center stage, Ivo Cruz will present “A decolonial look on the oppressions narrated by an Amazonian shaman”. Through his study of the spiritual practice of pajelança cabocla in the Marajó Island, Northern Brazil, Cruz asks if coloniality has in any way influenced the ritual. He analyzes excerpts of the autobiography O mundo místico dos Caruanas e a revolta de sua Ave (1993) by the pajé (a spiritual leader) Zeneida Lima. Cruz is interested in finding how the colonial thought appears in Lima’s narrative. The author was born into a conservative family that was seen as a model for society due to her father’s political career. Being a pajé meant to challenge the coloniality represented by her family. Cruz will underscore some passages from the 1993 autobiography and contrast them to concepts of Decolonial Studies. He proposes to make connections between colonial thought and the actions of Lima’s oppressors, in addition to understanding the mechanisms behind their reactions towards Lima’s shamanist praxes.

Panelists will have 13 minutes to present. There will be a 15-minute discussion with the attendees at the end.