Brazilian Indigenous Literature Facing Gaia: An Essay about the End

Abstract

The word ecology was coined by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919) in 1869 to designate the scientific study of organisms in the context of their organic and/or inorganic environments. The word comes from the Greek terms oikos (house) and logos (study) and was created to name a new field in Western sciences. Indigenous peoples, in turn, did not establish any division between the concept of development of human life (civilization) and nature, fighting against the excessive exploitation of natural resources undertaken by the invaders since the beginning of the colonization. From the European perspective, this speech meant backwardness, being, therefore, refuted. However, global warming and successive environmental tragedies have been increasing the world interest on Native leaders’ opinions about the theme. In Brazil, this change became remarkable during the 2020 pandemic, when Indigenous works about the Anthropocene became best sellers. In this essay, I try to show how the mainstream is absorbing those ideas, linking Bruno Latour’s (2020) worldview with Indigenous cosmogonies presented by several Brazilian authors, such as Ailton Krenak, Davi Kopenawa, Eliane Potiguara and Marcia Kambeba.