War. This is the only word capable of defining centuries of a history of oppression and, once again, genocide of Brazilian indigenous peoples. Gods and deities from beyond the sea wrecked filthy bodies on the soil of a thousand peoples, in an instant, millennia of a delicate process of natural balance would open a wound permanently exposed to the indigenous holocaust-apocalypse. In the name of God, progress and the arrogant grandeur of the Portuguese and Spanish empires, forests, women and traditions thrown into the sputum and mud of civilizations.

Which humanity are we still talking about? Is there still another future in place of that river, mountain, land? Millions of indigenous people were reduced to thousands, a world invaded and taken over by others who do not see others. It is through these tragic paths that the philosopher Ailton Krenak presents us with his vision of what was the conquest of indigenous lands by the Portuguese, a conquest forged by usurpation, robbery, annihilation and blood. Ideas to postpone the end of the world is the proposal of your book which, also like the documentary Guerras do Brasil, shown on Netflix, presents us with the point of view of the original Brazilian peoples on the Portuguese invasion and their incompatible permanence in their lands.

Para o autor o homem branco ainda não se contentou com sua pretensa dominação da natureza. Sua sede pela terra e seus recursos o cega de uma autêntica vida em harmonia com as forças vitais. Na percepção de Krenak: 

We should admit nature as an immense multitude of forms. Every piece of us that is part of everything. 70% water and a bunch of other materials that make us up. And we create this abstraction of unity, man as the measure of things, and we go around trampling everything, without general conviction until everyone accepts that there is a unity with which they identify, acting in the world at our disposal, taking what the people want. This contact with another possibility involves studying, feeling, smelling, inhaling, exhaling those layers of what was left out of the ordinary “nature” but which for some reason is still confused with it. (KRENAK, 2019, p 69).

The tortuous and torturous paths that took the country's indigenous communities to the brink of extinction make us realize that the blood roots of this story also resonate in the school space, in its curriculum and in the pedagogical practices that make indigenous peoples invisible from the processes of construction of education for diversity. An example of this are the curricula of educational institutions that do not yet offer content or curricular practices that include the local indigenous community.

Culture of forgetfulness? Massacre for progress at any price, they promote profits every moment and genocide advances, cutting down trees, men, thoughts. It is essential that we think about transdisciplinary aspects in school that allow us to subvert the logic of capitalist production, the vision of progress as salvation, but such salvation continues to be that of a small elite while the destruction of other possible worlds takes place.

How to build a struggle with heterogeneous alliances, for a coalition for the survival of original peoples?

De que forma o progresso instituído e representado pela figura do homem branco pode oferecer recursos e segurança aos povos indígenas de modo a adiar o fim dos mundos? E ainda, como possibilitar que este caminho seja vivido por estudantes e professores no contexto do ensino da arte? Krenak nos mostra que essa aliança está, mesmo longe de ser alcançada, possibilitando hoje às comunidades indígenas uma visibilidade que antes não havia no país, fruto de um árduo processo de desmistificação da imagem do índio como sujeito fora do acordo civilizacional, assim como o próprio Krenak podem usar sua voz para ecoar outras vozes numa denúncia sistemática sobre o outro lado das guerras de conquista e das atuais guerras de apaziguamento entre civilização e os direitos dos povos originários. 

One of these voices that today echo the drama and life of Brazilian indigenous peoples is the artistic work of Arissana Pataxó, who provokes us in her work entitled “Mikay” to think about what it is to be indigenous in Brazil today, notably a sharp response in format with a machete with a question to the civilization of barbarism: what does being an Indian mean to you? Arissana takes us to other indigenous women who fight for their traditions amid the chaos of monoculture, greed and economic speculation, including the Indian Tuíra, who in 1989 rubs her machete against the face of one of the representatives of the Amazon state. His gesture still reverberates in our culture, shaking oligarchies and policies that undermine indigenous rights, such as the time frame, PL 490, which allows, for example, contact with isolated indigenous people if there is “public utility” (the entire content of the project can be accessed here.)