“The Academy is very pleased to recognize and value indigenous culture,” meaning the desire to “have the greatest possible representation of Brazilian culture here,” Brazilian Academy of Letters President Merval Pereira said. in statements to TV Globo.
Ailton Krenak was born in 1953 in Minas Gerais, in the Doce River valley, an area affected by mining activities.
As an activist in the social-ecological movement and defender of the rights of indigenous peoples, he participated in the creation of the Alliance of Forest Peoples and the Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI).
The Brazilian government has also responded to these historic elections through the Vice President of Lula da Silva’s government in Congress, Bohn Gass.
“Environmentalist, philosopher, poet, writer and honoris causa professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Ailton Krenak, is the first indigenous leader elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. It took more than 100 years for this to happen. But it happened,” Bohn Gass wrote on social media.
Krenak received 23 votes, beating historian Mary Del Priore (12 votes) and writer Daniel Munduruku (3 votes).
According to local press reports, he did not campaign because he spent most of his time in the Krenak indigenous reserve in the municipality of Resplendor in Minas Gerais state.
At the age of 17, Ailton Krenak moved to the state of Paraná, where he learned to read and write.
He participated in the founding of the National Union of Indigenous Peoples (UNI), the first indigenous movement of national expression, and was a central figure in the National Constituent Assembly in 1987, where he painted his face with black paint in protest against the decline of the indigenous population. indigenous rights in Brazil.
He made his debut as a writer in 1999, when his work “O Eterno Retorno do Encontro” was included in the anthology “The Other Margin of the West”.
His works also include “Tomorrow is Not for Sale” (2020), “Life is Not Useful” (2020), “Ancestral Future” (2022), “The system and the anti-system: three essays, three worlds in the same world” (2021), “The place where the earth rests” (2000) and “Setting a foot on the territory” (2020).
His book “Ideias para Adiar o Fim do Mundo”, released in 2021, became one of the bestsellers in Brazil that year and has already been translated into English, French and German.
The Brazilian Academy of Letters has been promoting diversification among its members for several years, both in terms of gender, race and profession, bringing in 2021 the famous singer, composer and former Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and the acclaimed actress Fernanda Montenegro, known as “The First Lady of the Brazilian Theater”.
Among the approximately 300 “immortals” who occupy or occupy the 40 seats of the Brazilian Academy of Letters are writers such as Jorge Amado, Machado de Assis, Nélida Piñón, Paulo Coelho and João Guimarães Rosa, as well as former Brazilian presidents José Sarney and Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Source: DN
