For professor and writer Daniel Munduruku, indigenous people will find allies in academia
The Bolsonaro government's heavy attack on indigenous peoples on the day of its inauguration and in its first provisional measure, practically dismantling Funai, did not surprise indigenous professor and writer Daniel Munduruku, who wrote an article on his blog with the excerpt above. “I already expected it. Because what seemed to be just the speech of a buffoon in a campaign, ended up revealing a purpose that was already established in the power project of this far-right group, which has long wanted to take over indigenous territories,” he said, by phone. “In fact, Funai has always been a big white elephant in the hands of the State. And even the center-left or left-wing governments did little to give it materiality and functionality, taking it away from the specter of being a military institution – a bit out of cowardice on the left, which didn’t want to stir the hornet’s nest.”
Daniel Munduruku has a degree in philosophy, a degree in history and psychology, a doctorate in education from USP and a postdoctoral degree in linguistics from UFSCar. He wrote 52 books for children, young people and educators, winning awards several times in Brazil and abroad; in 2017, with the Jabuti Award in the youth category. He served as a guest professor at Unicamp in the first semester of 2018, teaching the subject “Indigenous themes at school”, under the responsibility of professor Alik Wunder, at the Faculty of Education; he also worked on a postgraduate course focusing on the indigenous presence in academic thought and Brazilian literature; and also collaborated in the discussions of the Unicamp GT for the implementation of the Indigenous Entrance Exam.
Not even what seemed unthinkable, the transfer of responsibility for the identification and demarcation of indigenous lands precisely to the Ministry of Agriculture – submitting to Funai to the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights – surprised the writer. “What might not have been imagined This was supposed to happen on the first day of the year. But it seems like they need to do everything very quickly. If they are not quick, they run the risk of not being able to destroy everything that has been built from the point of view of social achievements. Regarding my expectations for the future, it is that this government will not last long. I still haven’t said what it came from, other than at the moment it is feeding those who financed it: the right itself.”
No article published on your blog, Munduruku considers that, “whether we like it or not”, Funai is the only institution that understands the complex epistemological systems that indigenous peoples hold, praising its technical staff. “You hear a lot of negative things about Funai, such as that it is corrupt, which is known. But it is not said that it is an arm of the State that has effective action within the villages, through people extremely committed to safeguarding indigenous rights and knowledge. In the midst of this mess of employees there have always been corrupt or corrupted people, including indigenous employees. Those who criticize may be right, but they don’t know about indigenous issues. Those who do know are the technicians who work directly with these populations, on a daily basis, even when they face threats.”
Still in the article “The last socialists – Or why persecute indigenous peoples?”, the writer responds to this government's threat to “end cultural Marxism”, showing in brief history that there has never been socialism in Brazil. “The only socialists are the indigenous populations, who live a life far from the capitalist system, from class division. They are human groups fighting eagerly for their territory – not for individual, private property – and for traditions and cultures that are their ancestral memory; who seek to maintain their good life, a lifestyle based on the tripod of harmony with nature, harmony between people and spiritual harmony. When you remove indigenous people from this, you remove an entire social structure that they still support. People’s lack of knowledge creates an incompatibility of understanding of indigenous thought.”
Regarding the weight of racial prejudice in the new government's actions against indigenous peoples, Daniel Munduruku observes that he usually makes a separation between prejudice and stupidity. “Prejudice comes from the education one had. Brazilians were educated to treat indigenous people as different beings, focused on things from the forest; When they start to learn about these people, which is not quite the case, they are amazed at their own ignorance – prejudice is a result of this ignorance. When we think about racism, we think about the stupidity of people who know what indigenous people are, their way of life and why they are there. We are talking about conscious people, but about a consciousness that leads to brutality, in the racist sense, as we see in the current government. The prejudiced person can be cured, but the racist cannot.”
According to the writer, the indigenous movement, as a political movement, is not sufficiently organized to resist, on its own, the pressures it is already suffering and those to come. “The movement has no economic power whatsoever, it cannot organize itself financially for this. It is clear that the leaders of APIB [Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil], which represents the movement nationally, are well prepared and qualified to carry out this resistance, but they will need to rely heavily on organized civil society, otherwise the indigenous people will be persecuted. , mistreated, massacred and even murdered along the way.”
Munduruku sees the university today as one of the great allies of indigenous populations, remembering that in the 70s, although there were anthropologists, they relied mainly on the black movement and the lawyers' movement. “The indigenous movement at that time was nascent and it was not believed that people could have a voice. Therefore, the military let things flow and the indigenous people spoke freely. But it was this movement that brought together the diverse forces of civil society. When the military realized, the indigenous people were already involved in the large demonstrations.”
The writer considers that now, in the 21st century, the strategy of coming to universities was one of the smartest that indigenous people have adopted. “In this case, it is not even part of the indigenous movement, as it is not an integrated action but an option for young students. An indigenous intelligence ended up being created, a kind of intellectual resistance, and the university captured this movement well and has opened its doors. From my point of view, perhaps the greatest resistance to all this happens in the universities themselves, which, if they manage to use the indigenous presence as a weapon for resistance, will find allies who are extremely aware of their own culture and willing to fight to remain in these institutions.”
A writer, basically
Asked about his own role in the indigenous movement, Daniel Munduruku responds that he is “basically” a writer, seeking to create possibilities for dialogue with Brazilian society. “I have done this in literature, as a professor when invited (in the case of Unicamp), in lectures at universities and schools. I try to combine the two different cultures and bring indigenous knowledge so that people can create a new consciousness, moving away from the idea that Brazil is a unique country, without prejudice, without racism, where everyone is equal. I try to open their eyes to a reality that sometimes they don't want to see, either because they didn't have the training for it, or because it's more comfortable not to see the problems and to be limited to the universe of consumption of the majority.”
Daniel Munduruku, who also makes regular visits and promotes actions in villages (of the Munduruku, to which he belongs, and of other relatives), defines himself as an “organic thinker”, looking at reality and formatting it so that people understand the that takes place in real life in society. And regarding his option for children's and young people's literature, he explains: “We need to educate at the basic level, offering children the possibility of getting to know another reality, which is not just that of school – square and linear. It is a need I feel to communicate with a part of society capable of understanding what indigenous people really are, without making judgments, without prejudice.”
