Ailton Krenak, indigenous leader of the Krenak people in Brazil, Latin America – or, in Pindorama, Abya Ayala, referring to the country and continent by its pre-colonial indigenous names. He co-founded or participated in several indigenous rights organizations. Krenak functioned as a representative of indigenous peoples at the debates on the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, where he covered himself in ritual face painting during a speech. He is an acclaimed author, part of Academia Brasileira de Letras, a selected group nominated as immortals of Brazilian literature, and one of the most important philosophers of our times. He reminds us that he is joined by more than 300 other indigenous people from the region and their unique languages.

For him, my home country Brazil unites dialects of indigenous, African black, Japanese, German, and Italians that transcended European Portuguese, becoming a “Brazilian language” (as he refers to the Brazilian Portuguese). Among his books are titles such as “Ideas to Postpone the End of The World”, “Life is Not Useful”, “Tomorrow Is Not On Sales”, and “Ancestral Futures”, released originally in Portuguese and now available in English as well.

But Ailton Krenak is not only available in written words. He is in theater plays, in lectures at the biggest conferences, and also leading the learning community “Selvagem”  (Meaning “Wild”, with the goal to rewild contemporary society) where he also narrates a video series called “Arrows”, addressing many urgent topics through the cosmovisions – the worldviews or cultural lenses – of indigenous people and he was also an important leading figure during the pandemic, hosting educational live streaming events to the population.

This biography should be enough for you to be interested in Ailton Krenak’s perspectives. But what are they? Krenak says one day when everything goes extinct the bankers will discover we can’t eat money.

Western civilization is trying to face the apocalypse but indigenous and black people faced it already, during enslavement. They found not only ways to survive but to keep living for more than 500 years. So he proposes ways of decentering human beings to remember we don’t exist as separate from nature but are nature. Nature is answering our rebellion with climate calamities that could have been worse without the indigenous people holding the sky and negotiating in the dreamworld with the natural phenomena.

I had the opportunity to meet him at an event in Brazil he surprised me with an invitation to go on stage to explain non-linear temporalities using the Torus I carry with me as one of the artifacts for decentering people. He also explained indigenous cultures have their very own artifacts for exactly that, but their people are not objects to be studied.

They are active subjects and agents of change. Just like Ailton Krenak and “Selvagem” led by him, other subjects that share the same indigenous perspective are the cross-cultural collective Gestures Towards Decolonial Futures based also in Canadá and producing their critical pedagogies, and also the project Indigenous AI Protocol by diverse communities in Aotearoa, Australia, North America, and the Pacific co-creating frameworks for AI development based in ancestral and indigenous wisdom.