‘I’m Going to Promote a Symphony’ of Languages Says Indigenous Writer and New Member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters

By Amazônia Real, Liam Anderson

This text, written by Elaíze Farias, was originally published on Amazônia Real’s website on April 4, 2024. It is republished here under a partnership agreement with Global Voices, with edits.

The Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) aims to cultivate the Portuguese language and national literature, and so it is historically significant that the Indigenous writer Ailton Krenak was appointed to the institution to promote what he calls the “Brazilian language.”

Krenak was elected by the members and took up seat number 5 on April 5, 2024. He is the first Indigenous person to join the ABL in its over 120-year history.

”I have started by giving this signal that I’m not going to expand the Lusophony, I am going to promote a symphony [of languages]. This symphony is estimated to represent 180 Indigenous languages,” he said.

Born in Minas Gerais state, Krenak has been an important figure in environmental and Indigenous rights activism since the 1980s, when the dictatorship ended and the country was reopening politically and debating the new federal constitution.  Now, at the age of 70, he says he wants to promote native languages with the ABL and, above all, young Indigenous writers.

His books have been translated in 19 countries. One of them, “Ideas to Postpone the End of the World” was translated into Portuguese in Portugal, where it is called “Ideas to Save Humanity.”

Before his inauguration, Ailton Krenak gave an online interview to the Amazônia Real website from his home in the territory of the Krenak people in Minas Gerais state.

Amazônia Real (AR): How did you find out about your appointment?

I was surprised by a newspaper note saying: “Ailton is tipped as favourite to occupy seat number 5, left by José Murilo de Carvalho [an historian, also from Minas Gerais].’ I said ‘I’m not a candidate for anything.’ So, I was invited to join the Academy. That’s the point. I didn’t go knocking on the Academy’s door. I was welcomed in a very kind and cordial way by all those gentlemen and ladies. And the lady Fernanda Montenegro [an actress] said, ‘I want you to come to the academy, Ailton Krenak.’ That, to me, is a summons.

AR: You will work in an environment that cherishes the Portuguese language. Is it possible to reverse the predominance of this European language [in Brazil], with its colonial roots?

There was an election. I said I would take more than 200 native languages of Brazil with me and that Portuguese is not a Brazilian language, it is a European language. I’ve started by giving this signal that I’m not going there to expand the Lusophony, I am going to promote a symphony [of languages]. This symphony is estimated by linguists to be around 180 languages, but the Indigenous movement and campaigners say there are 305 – there are 305 recognized ethnicities, not all of which have their own language actively spoken. The National Museum’s studies of Indigenous languages have increased greatly. So, Indigenous linguists will be my colleagues at the ABL to work on the theme of mother tongues.

AR: What will be your first actions in the ABL?

I will promote an event that has the meaningful name of ‘Mother Tongue,’ and call on Indigenous philologists, people who have already produced vocabulary and dictionaries. Joaquim Maná Kaxinawá [an Indigenous professor from Acre] has a doctorate in linguistics and has done important work in producing an encyclopedia of the Huni Kuin language. I will create a platform so that all relevant information about the native languages can be constantly updated. So that experts in Indigenous languages can revive languages that now happen to be dormant. I know there is a common conception about dead languages, but I don’t believe in extinct languages. You can physically extinguish a people, but not a language.

I am doing this together with colleagues from the National Museum, [and] the Museum of the Person (São Paulo), [it’s] an initiative of young Indigenous people at university. Some of them are linguists and will be important contributors to the platform. What I will do there is create interactions between the languages present in Brazil’s cultural diversity and the Portuguese language, which is the language of the Academy.

AR: Why join the Brazilian Academy of Letters, a literary institution that has always been characterized by elitism?

You could have asked me ‘Ailton, why did you paint your face black [while speaking] at the Constituent [Assembly] of 1987 and 1988?’ Modesty aside, I’ll tell you: there was nobody else to do it. Is there somebody else who could go to the ABL right now? Historically the ABL has been really elitist. Until 1977, as well as being elitist, it was patriarchal, it only had men [members]. Some were there because they were politically powerful.

AR: Is it the distinctions [we make] between terms and lexicons that characterize the Portuguese language as it is spoken in Brazil?

The Brazilian language, Brazilian Portuguese, is very creative. It has a great ability to produce meanings. It’s very interesting. The ABL has been modernizing and updating itself in relation to Brazilian society. Gilberto Gil is in there. Heloísa Teixeira, who people knew as Heloísa Buarque. Lilia Schwarcz has been elected now, helping to bring up topics that are related to [everyday] Brazilian life and that do not usually come up in the ABL. Similarly, Indigenous people never appeared there. It was only in 1977 that the ABL admitted the first woman, Rachel de Queiroz.

AR: Is it possible to speak of a Brazilian language?

My book ‘Ideas to Postpone the End of the World’ was published in the supposed language of Brazil, which is Portuguese. [In Portugal] they said, “We want to translate the book into Portuguese.” This means that native Portuguese speakers consider our language to be Brazilian, not Portuguese. As well as that, they changed the title to ‘Ideas to Save Humanity.’

AR: Is the ABL prepared to have a dialogue with other worldviews and languages which are different from Brazil’s Eurocentric legacy?

The ABL is a space of erudition, cordiality, kindness, and has nothing to do with militaristic ideas. It’s not a barracks. It is an academy for people who love literature, letters, and who have a commitment to promote the Lusophony, and Brazil has the distinction of being the largest lusophone country. There are more people speaking Portuguese in Brazil than in Portugal.

A part of Brazil’s intelligentsia prefers to occupy itself with the Portuguese language, but there are thousands of other authors, writers, poets, thinkers, of the Tropicalia and Modernism movements, Mário de Andrade (1893–1945), Oswald de Andrade (1890–1954), and so many others who broke the mould. They were mixing the language through their interest in contact between the native languages of this continent and the languages of the peoples of the African diaspora. Modernist literature is full of elements of languages of African and Indigenous origin.

Guimarães Rosa (1908–1967) wrote a short story with the title “My Uncle, the Iauarete,” which includes parts of phrases or sentences in Xavante, Krenak, Maxakali, [and] classic Tupi. The tale is a fantastic composition where [elements of] Indigenous languages are peppered through the body of the text as if they were traces left for the future. He left signs foretelling a linguistic transformation of Brazil where Portuguese is but one of its hundreds of languages.

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Previously Published on globalvoices.org with Creative Commons License

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Photo credit: The philosopher and activist, Ailton Krenak. Photo by Tânia Rêgo/Agência Brasil, used with permission

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