São Luís, Brazil, 1992.
Lives and works in Aldeia Piçarra preta, Brazil.
My name is Genilson Guajajara I am from Aldeia Piçarra Preta, indigenous land Rio Pindaré\MA I want to talk a little about the world of photography, how it came into my life to the people who most contributed to make this happen, they were people who appeared in my life in the field of education and when opportunities appeared to participate in the political training organized by the Justice network on the tracks of GEDMMA, which develops a workshop within communities affected by large projects.
A new world was presented to me because until then, here in our territory, this type of tool was not so accessible to us, the indigenous peoples of the Rio Pindaré territory, I always wanted to register the culture of my people, the “girl’s party” that it is a rite of passage for the girl to adulthood.
In 2019 we held our first photographic exhibition at the house in Maranhão, with the theme of the Girl’s party, in the same year I presented a lecture and a short film on the ritual of the girl’s party, at the IV National Symposium on Art and Media at UFMA.
“The terribly raw”
A desperate child tries to control the fire towards his house, the other children went to a tap to get more water, and his grandmother was completely nervous because at the moment there was only one solution or they controlled the fire or they lost the house. Sometimes these situations come up, and there is no time to prepare ourselves to deal with them.
Perhaps the way we want to speak or show our struggle is not clear to some people. We have to speak the same language, because otherwise it doesn’t make sense. I grew up having to learn to speak the white man’s language, now I realize that I’m not the one who has to learn something.
Here is a great Warrior, a young dreamer, a philosopher, a doctor, a scientist, an old man, “Nature has this knowledge in data” and formed great thinkers. For some our struggle, talk, and the way we relate to nature is raw. Or at least they never understood our connection with her.
