Why women are key to saving Brazil’s forests
Célia Xakriabá is the voice of a new generation of female indigenous leaders who are leading the fight against the destruction of Brazil’s forests both in the Amazon and the lesser-known Cerrado, a savannah that covers a fifth of the country.
V, formerly Eve Ensler, is the award-winning author of the Vagina Monologues, an activist and founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls and the Earth. The two recently held a conversation in which V asked Xakriabá about what is happening to Brazil’s biodiversity and indigenous peoples, and why women are the key to change.
The Amazon’s like the vagina of the world because it’s where people come from. It’s like the entry door of the world. When this opening is sick, the future generations, they will be sick also. People lost this connection to the Earth because they don’t see Earth and land as a relative. For me, the Earth is like a grandmother, because it’s Earth who gave birth to all of the mothers of the world. Earth is like the first independent woman that created humanity and Earth needed rivers and water to create humanity. But now people just see Earth as a thing. They can design big cities, but they can’t see this connection to Earth. They go to the supermarket, to the grocery store, and they don’t know where that food comes from.
I’ve been saying that this 21st century, it’s the century of the indigenous woman because you can’t cure the same evil that first caused the sickness. You have to overcome this colonizing power that is mainly male.
I like to say about the matrix of destruction that it’s not a matrix, it’s the patrix because it’s based on patriarchy, not matriarchy. And the women, they are the ones who are in this century regaining power over the land, because they know how to cure the Earth. Women have this knowledge and that’s why we are on the frontline right now.
I am fighting to not only strengthen the role of women in the territory and in the fight but also in politics, with indigenous women running for positions in parliament, in the Brazilian Congress. Who can take better care of humanity, if not women?
People just see Earth as a thing. They can design big cities, but they can’t see this connection to Earth.
My hope for the future is being alive. And by that I don’t mean just my body being alive. But our voice has to be alive. Our memory, our chants, our singing, and our womb, because you can’t be alive in your body if the womb of the Earth is sick, because when the Earth is sick, we can’t get food. And what’s the point of keeping your body alive if all around you is dead?
