Long Live the Living School

The Baniwa (Medzeniakonai) are inhabitants of the cultural and multilingual system of the Alto Rio Negro, an area of approximately 250,000 km² spanning the northwestern Amazon Basin. It is in this region that Madzerokai – House of Ancestral Knowledge, the Baniwa Living School, is located.

The exhibition features paintings by Frank Baniwa, Larissa Baniwa, and Francy Baniwa, as well as the installation Umbigo do mundo [Navel of the World], created by the community of the Baniwa Living School in the village of Assunção do Içana: Maria Cleocimar, Viviane Almeida, Gelma, Laura Almeida, Eliane Fontes, Virgília Almeida, Bidoca Castro, Maristela, Íris, Elisangela, Lilian Livino, Vera Teixeira, Josiane Mandu, Maria Aparecida, Fátima Castro, Isabel Castro, Francisco, Frank, Estevão, Hermes, Miguel, Robertinho, Cláudio, Jorge, Jonilton, Antônio, and Genival.

The Shubu Hiwea Living School is the dream of the pajé [shaman] Dua Busẽ. He lives with his family in the village of Coração da Floresta [Heart of the Forest], in the Alto Rio Jordão region. Dua Busẽ possesses profound knowledge of Huni Kuĩ culture—including stories, medicine, music, and spirituality—and over the years has passed this knowledge on to other shamans and apprentices. In his village, he created a large garden, which he named the Parque União da Medicina [Garden of the Union of Medicines], where the knowledge and practices of traditional medicine are cultivated, studied, and carried out.

The exhibition features paintings by Rua Yube (José Maia) Huni Kuĩ and Ayani (Maria Ducila) Huni Kuĩ, created during the Casa Escola Viva [Living School House] residency, as well as several canvases produced during a workshop held in the territory of the Huni Kuĩ Living School, in the village of Coração da Floresta, between April and May 2026, with the participation of Ayani (Maria Ducila), Shuku Bena, Inu Bake, Inu Ibã, José Domingos, Dua Txuwã, Edivaldo Sena da Silva, Aldo Sena da Silva, Luciene Domingos da Silva, Alderina Vandique Domingos, Maria Socorro Sena da Silva, Itã, Teresa Netẽ, Maspã, Paulino, and Ayani (Francisca Domingos).

In Arandu Porã, the Guarani Living School, young people have begun to awaken their dormant memories. Ancestral practices are in dialogue with agroforestry techniques and beekeeping. In this territory, where the Guarani Mbya language predominates, children and youth find in the Living School a place to learn the stories of their people and to practice their art and science.

The exhibition features paintings by Carlos Papá, Bruno Djeguaká, Kauê Karai, and Suri Jera, created during the Casa Escola Viva [Living School House] residency, as well as a sculpture of Pytü, the Darkness, and paintings produced in workshops at the Guarani Living School, also including the participation of Fabiano Kuaray, Léo Wera, Cristine Takuá, Alexandre Wera, Tupã, and Cristiano Wera Poty.

The Maxakali are the ancestral inhabitants of the forests that once covered northeastern Minas Gerais and the far south of Bahia. They number approximately 3,000 people and speak the Maxakali language, one of the last remaining Indigenous languages of the region. The Forest School Village, the Living School of the Maxakali people, was established through the reclamation of federal land located in the rural area of Teófilo Otoni, Minas Gerais.

The exhibition features canvases by Mamei Maxakali and Isabelinha Maxakali, created during the Casa Escola Viva [Living School House] residency, as well as mīmãnãn ceremonial poles, traditional garments, and additional paintings produced during workshops in the Maxakali Living School, with the participation of Isael, Sueli, Cassiano, Rolando, Erismar, Veronildo, Marcinho, Marcos, Evaldo, and Voninho, in addition to Mamei and Isabelinha.

The Bahserikowi – Center of Indigenous Medicine is located in the city of Manaus and collaborates with various institutions, including the Pan American Health Organization, the Indigenous Health Secretariat, the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, and the Universidade Federal do Amazonas. The kumuã specialists who work at the Center come from the Yepamahsã (Tukano), Utãpirõ-porã (Tuyuka), and Umukori-mahsã (Desana) peoples of the Indigenous communities of the Alto Rio Negro region.

The exhibition presents canvases and drawings created by Ivan Tukano and Thaís Desana during the Living School House residency, as well as an Amazonian pharmacy installation developed in collaboration with the Bahserikowi team and specialists from the Alto Rio Negro, together with traditional wooden benches carved by Celestino Tukano and Valter Tukano.

The Grandparents are the guardians of good and beautiful messages that are breathed into words, told through ancient narratives, or transformed into arts that invigorate our path through life. To invoke the Grandparents, to listen to them and witness their activations, is to access other codes and to feel the ancestry that inhabits their ancient messages. When a grandfather takes up his maracá and sings prayers of healing and protection, or when the grandmothers welcome newborn babies into the world with their chants, they are building bridges between the human world and the world of spirits.

For the exhibition Viva Viva Escola Viva [Long Live the Living School], several grandparents were invited to bring forth the strength of ancestral memory: Ehuana Yanomami, Tõrãmʉ Kẽhíri (Luiz Lana), Moisés Piyãko, and Ailton Krenak. They are keepers of the delicate wisdom of those who seek to feel their own shadow.

Cristine Takuá is the coordinator of the Living Schools project, a thinker, midwife, and Indigenous Maxakali educator.

She holds a degree in Philosophy from Universidade Estadual Paulista and taught for twelve years at the Txeru Ba’e Kuai’ Indigenous State School. She currently coordinates Living Schools and is part of Associação Selvagem, a study cycle on life.

Cristine is a representative of the Núcleo de Educação Indígena [Indigenous Education Center] within the São Paulo State Department of Education, a founding member of Fórum de Articulação dos Professores Indígenas do Estado de São Paulo [Forum for the Coordination of Indigenous Teachers in the State of São Paulo], and a member of Instituto Maracá, which co-manages the Museu das Culturas Indígenas in São Paulo.

She lives in the Ribeirão Silveira Indigenous Land, located on the border between the municipalities of Bertioga and São Sebastião.

Schools have been conceived in many different ways. There are treatises defining the school as a central institution in the organization of societies, responsible for structuring the transmission of knowledge, values, and ways of life. But schools are also shaped by the lives of those who inhabit them. They are not merely a system: they are a place of experience, where people transform themselves, learn, unlearn, and move. There is always movement in schools, even when their forms appear stable.

To affirm the possibility of a “living school” is not to expand the existing model, but to displace it. The term, proposed by Dua Busẽ of Shubu Hiwea, the Huni Kuĩ Living School, names a way of learning in which knowledge cannot be separated from living. Knowledge does not appear as something external to be accumulated, but as something produced and shared through relationships with the territory, the body, time, and other individuals — transmitted through use, practice, and coexistence, crossing generations and being transformed as it is lived.

Co-organized with Associação Selvagem, the exhibition Viva Viva Escola Viva [Long Live the Living School] brings together artworks and reflections by the Living Schools project, a movement that supports the strengthening and transmission of traditional knowledge in Indigenous territories. Coordinated by Cristine Takuá, the project currently includes five experiences from the Maxakali, Huni Kuĩ, Tukano, Desana, Tuyuka, Guarani, and Baniwa peoples, led by the coordinators of each school: Sueli Maxakali and Isael Maxakali; Dua Busẽ and Teresa Netẽ Huni Kuĩ; Carla Wisu, João Paulo Tukano, and Ivan Tukano; Carlos Papá; Francisco Fontes Baniwa and Francy Baniwa. These experiences take place in villages and territories as part of everyday life, and are not limited to the exhibition space. The show at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake offers a snapshot of this broader process, which continues to unfold.

The exhibition brings together different languages and forms of expression emerging from the territories and their traditional knowledge systems. Through workshops, artistic residencies, lived experiences, and forms of knowledge specific to each Living School, the works reveal the singularities and diversity in each people’s ways of living and making. 

Part of the works presented in this exhibition—itself the result of years of work by the Living Schools—was produced through collaborative processes grounded in the ancestral cultures and knowledge of these communities. These dynamics create a space for encounter and listening in which different practices and cosmologies are articulated, developing new approaches to making art and, consequently, conceiving exhibitions. 

Committed to moving in this same direction, Instituto Tomie Ohtake reaffirms its dedication to valuing cultural diversity and to promoting artistic practices that expand the forms of creating, thinking, and sharing knowledge.

Instituto Tomie Ohtake thanks the people of the villages, the artists, the leaders, and the coordinators who work within their territories, strengthening bonds and fostering the continuity of their cultures; and the Ministry of Culture, for making the exhibition Viva Viva Escola Viva possible through the Culture Incentive Law (Rouanet Law). The exhibition is organized by Instituto Tomie Ohtake in partnership with Associação Selvagem, with support from institutional patron Nubank, and sponsorship from Aché Laboratórios Farmacêuticos, under the Silver sponsorship category.

Instituto Tomie Ohtake

We have crossed rivers, skies, roads, and a world in flames to arrive here and now. The artworks displayed here and now, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake, have traversed far more remote places; they come from the origins of worlds that have not lost their threads of memory. These world-origins remain alive in the Guarani, Maxakali, Huni Kuĩ, Baniwa, and Tukano-Desana-Tuyuka Living Schools [Escolas Vivas].

Here and now there are fibers made from tucum palm trees grown in the Alto Rio Negro region, as well as the navel of the world woven by the hands of Baniwa women, midwives and keepers of the fields.

Pytü, the Darkness, has a home in this room, and it is a Guarani home. Pytü is the origin of all things—the intense darkness from which the first sigh, the first being, the first life may emerge.

There are mīmãnãns giving the precise coordinates to here and now, so that the spirits who appear in Maxakali rituals may find us.

Here and now there is a teaching cloth by the Huni Kuĩ people, with kenes taught by the boa Siriani in immemorial times. Kenes are much more than Indigenous drawings or patterns: they are readings of pulsations, they are presence; they are art, healing, and the transmission of knowledge, all at once, within the same geometrical expression.

Medicinal plants are here and now as well, brought by the Tukano-Desana-Tuyuka Living School. They are Amazonian elixirs and balms formulated with the power to enhance the complex chemistry of life.

Sculptures, paintings, and drawings are not objects, much less representations—they are prayers in dialogue with the invisible of which we are part.

Here and now is the crossing of space and time that continually creates the present. We are glad to be able to bring so many presences into the here and now.

We are Associação Selvagem, co-organizers of the exhibition Viva Viva Escola Viva [Long Live the Living School]. We are a non-governmental organization that involves a cycle of studies on life, the Indigenous movement of the Living Schools, and a collaborative network oriented towards ways of knowing and translating between worlds.

Since 2018, we have studied, documented, produced, shared, and supported Indigenous knowledge, building dialogues between the sciences and the arts. Selvagem is the confluence of even longer life paths, deeply engaged in learning processes between cultures and between species.

Through these studies and journeys, we have learned that countless here-and-nows give shape to life like a serpent cyclically renewing itself by eating its own tail. Presence is a continuous act, a confirmation felt in our bodies.

That is why Cristine Takuá, coordinator of the Living Schools, calls the project a movement. And that is why we seek continuity in our actions by articulating and renewing—with no end in sight—the monthly support for the five Living Schools, initiated in 2023.

We thank all those who engage with our study materials, who collaborate, who take part, as well as the institutes and individuals who support the continuity of Associação Selvagem. Here and now, we thank Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Paulo Miyada, who initiated this dialogue, Gabriela Moulin, Fábio Santiago, Ana Roman, and the amazing people who contribute to its existence.

Here, a building shaped like a coral snake suspends the sky over São Paulo.

Now, the joyful greeting: Long live the living school!

Associação Selvagem

Living Schools are an Indigenous movement dedicated to strengthening and passing on ancestral knowledge. Today, five centers carry out these activations within their own territories, seeking to awaken memories and traditions. Every Indigenous territory is itself a Living School. A patch of shade beneath a tree, the bank of a river, the prayer house—all are places where ancestral knowledge and practices are passed from generation to generation. 

Due to the imposition of Christian indoctrination and, later, the military schools established within Indigenous territories, many forms of knowledge gradually became dormant. The Living Schools initiative, articulated by Associação Selvagem together with each territory, and coordinated by me, Cristine Takuá, is a process of weaving networks of affection and care to awaken those memories that have hibernated over time.

Living Schools differ from conventional schools in that they prioritize the oral teachings of elders, plants, and dreams, rather than Western forms of knowledge. We do not have a fixed curriculum in the Living Schools, but rather an infinite weaving of possibilities for transmitting knowledge, respecting each child’s talents, and above all, their learning pace.

Our main goal is to care for the territories, to make sure children and young people keep dreaming and practicing ancestral knowledge, so that future generations will not forget—so that this immense wealth of teachings for our health and well-being, the teachings of our grandfathers and grandmothers, will not be dormant again.

All ancestral knowledge among Indigenous peoples is transmitted orally: through songs, stories, dialogues with plants and animals, even when based on graphic patterns, drawings, and other forms of recording. Orality, then, becomes a path through which the ancestral ways continue to be practiced by the young, so that they may carry these memories forward to future generations. Art accompanies Indigenous peoples in every step, in every action: preparing medicine, delivering a baby, building a trap for hunting, singing a sacred chant, spinning cotton, weaving a hammock, preparing the clay that will become a cooking pot. In short, art is the heart of culture, and within the Living Schools it continues to be practiced and valued.

Living Schools can only exist where territories are alive and standing. Recognizing and respecting Indigenous territories is also part of our dream and struggle, so that all forms of life may continue to live—and so that children may learn from mother pacas, agoutis, jaguars, frogs, ants, bees, rivers, and mountains.

LONG LIVE THE LIVING SCHOOL! 

Cristine Takuá

Coordinator of the Living Schools movement

Living Schools

A canoe of transformation, a palm tree (pindó), pillar of the Earth.

Each Living School plants a possibility for transformation and for worlds to endure.

Living Schools is an Indigenous movement dedicated to strengthening and transmitting traditional knowledge. Today, five centers carry out these activations within their own territories, seeking to awaken memories and traditions.

At the Associação Selvagem, we cultivate studies and activities through a collaborative network that connects voices and intertwines knowledge. Selvagem emerged from experiences of collaboration and articulation with the immense wisdom of Indigenous peoples.

The Living Schools movement is coordinated by me, Cristine Takuá. I am an educator, mother, midwife, and thinker. With my partner Carlos Papá, my sons, Kauê and Djeguaka, and my adopted daughters, Yryapua, Pará, Yva, Jera, and Xapya, I live in the Rio Silveira Indigenous Land of the Guarani Mbya People. 

I cultivate an ongoing dialogue with each center, seeking to keep alive a network of exchanges. In texts published in the Diário de Aprendizagens Selvagem [Selvagem Ways of Knowing Diary], I share my experiences with the Living Schools Shubu Hiwea, of the Huni Kuĩ people; Apne Ixkot Hãmhipak, of the Maxakali people; Arandu Porã, of the Guarani people; Bahserikowi, of the Tukano, Desana, and Tuyuka peoples; and Madzerokai, of the Baniwa people.

The dream of awakening memories and strengthening territories unfolds through highly sensitive and challenging layers of a journey we take together with Associação Selvagem, a great sower of thought. These collective steps propose an alternative to the mental monoculture that still prevails in many contexts.

Through a dialogue with time, we come to understand the codes that surround us. We reach directions and perceptions of ancestral technologies that have been seized and restricted by the forms of knowledge transmission imposed by non-living schools. Time reconnects us with the ancestral, for it allows dormant knowledge—that others attempted to erase—to blossom once again. The acts of listening, feeling, dialoguing, and respecting time transform and heal.

The first phase of the Living Schools was the time of awakening, when most of them found themselves having to organize, structure, and seek ways to confront the many difficulties resulting from the violence of colonization.

The second phase was a time to breathe. After the first years of support, it became possible to understand that the paths for sustaining the projects were open, and each group began concentrating on collective actions within its own territory and community. This breath of air came from a sense of being welcomed and from recognizing all that could be transformed through daily actions, rooted in each lived reality, with the support received. This breath also came from the possibility of listening to (and dreaming) stories, and transforming them into art together with children, youth, and elders.

As each representative and community came to recognize themselves as active Living Schools, they began to experience a time of abundance. In it, each active collective began to transform its territory and see dreams become reality.

It was then possible to carry out major actions and exchanges among the five Living Schools. Between December 2023 and January 2024, the first Viva Viva Escola Viva [Long Live the Living School] exhibition took place in Rio de Janeiro, bringing together arts, medicines, and thought. In October 2025, two artists from each Living School gathered at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM Rio) for the Casa Escola Viva [Living School House] artistic residency—fifteen days of creation and exchange. Now, in June 2026, in São Paulo, a new edition of Viva Viva Escola Viva is born.

The Living Schools affirm themselves as a collective seeking to transform the relationship between teaching and learning, and to value what is truly useful and necessary in the constant exchange of ancestral knowledge—knowledge that, through colonial and epistemological arrogance, was distorted within a classical and rigid model of schooling. The art of the Living Schools is not art as commodity, but art as thought, art as dream, and art as action for strengthening the lives of each culture.

Now in its second edition, the exhibition Viva Viva Escola Viva communicates to the world the existence of resistance and the strength of culture, through the transmission of knowledge between generations and communities. Through the gathering of the coordinators of the five Living Schools, each territory-space will be able to share experiences and challenges and, in doing so, strengthen one another.

The healing of the Earth; the power of songs; memories of beings that no longer live among us, such as the great trees of the regions of Minas Gerais; the oral traditions of countless narratives about spirit-beings, guardians of all that inhabits the Earth; respect for traditional medicines; the preservation of the path of bem viver [good living], in order to live and exist in balance—these are among the many dreams cherished by each member of the Living Schools.

And as we follow the future of the Living Schools, we dream of experiencing a time of living and active memories, in a constant flow of exchanges and respectful interactions with all forms of life.

This exhibition seeks to bring forth the echo of the ancestral force that inhabits the many ways of transmitting knowledge. During these days, by seeing and feeling each message breathed into the world by the members of the Living Schools, everyone will have the chance to connect with the essence of our collective action. Peoples of the Nhe’ëry and Amazon forests will be the artists and masters who, with beauty and sensitivity, will breathe thoughts, arts, and enchantments into the world.

LONG LIVE THE LIVING SCHOOL!

Cristine Takuá

Coordinator of the Living Schools movement

Shubu Hiwea – Huni Kuĩ Living School 

Coordinators: Dua Busẽ and Teresa Netẽ

The Huni Kuĩ Living School is a dream of the pajé [shaman] Dua Busẽ. He lives with his family in a village named Coração da Floresta [Heart of the Forest] in the Alto Rio Jordão region. Dua Busẽ has a deep knowledge of Huni Kuĩ culture—of stories, medicine, music, and spirituality—and, over the years, has passed on his wisdom to other pajés and apprentices. In his village, he created a large garden, which he named Parque União da Medicina [Garden of the Union of Medicines], where the traditional medicine knowledge of his people is cultivated, studied, and practiced. Netẽ, his companion, is also a master craftswoman and connoisseur of kenes, sacred symbols that carry ancestral stories in each line. In addition to Parque União da Medicina, the Living School hosts weaving workshops and community care practices, led by Netẽ and other women.

Shubu Hiwea is a concept offered by the Huni Kuĩ people to the entire Living Schools movement. It speaks of the connection between the transmission of knowledge and all existing life in the territories, in dialogue with human and non-human beings. 

May all of us, Indigenous people, achieve joy, our work, our culture, our tradition. All the various Indigenous peoples in Brazil, our entire nation, not just our relatives.

Dua Busẽ

Arandu Porã – Guarani Living School 

Coordinator: Carlos Papá

The Guarani people inhabit the southern region of South America in a wide territory, overlapped by the lands of Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia. The Guarani name this entire region, beyond current political boundaries, as a part of the broad Yvy Rupa, “the bed of the Earth”. In the Rio Silveira Indigenous Land, where Arandu Porã is located, the younger members of the community were invigorated as they came to recognize the importance of the Living School and, through this awakening, they began to sing, to understand codes, and to practice forms of knowledge that had been silenced. The Living School is a tool to usher this age-old education, an education of respect, an education on health, an education of walking, speaking, and looking.

Through the Living School I was able to learn from the elders about the importance of life and to value the knowledge of our tradition. And, with great effort, this has been put into practice.

Carlos Papá 

Apne Ixkot Hãmhipak, Forest School Village – Maxakali Living School 

Coordinators: Sueli Maxakali and Isael Maxakali

The Maxakali Living School emerged with the reclaiming of Aldeia Escola Floresta [Forest School Village], now recognized as Indigenous Land. It brings together 327 people in a project that combines reforestation, cultural workshops, and gatherings of pajés. The Maxakali are ancestral inhabitants of the forests that once covered the entire basin of the Pardo, Jequitinhonha, and Mucuri rivers, in the region now known as northeastern Minas Gerais and the far south of Bahia.  

Aldeia Escola Floresta is the most recent territory of the Maxakali, established through the reclaiming of federally owned land in the rural area of Teófilo Otoni, in Minas Gerais. Isael often says that the true home of the Maxakali, the “real village,” can only exist together with the forest, which is the dwelling place of the Yãmĩyxop, the spirit-peoples of the Atlantic Forest, and that life in these places—village and forest—is the best way to educate their children and transmit their traditional knowledge: it is, therefore, their Living School. They thus evoke the community project they had long envisioned, one driven by the Maxakali’s claim to their ancestral territories and by the longing they feel for the rivers, the hunting, and the great forest. 

We are not inventing the Living School, it has existed for many years. The forest teaches us, teaches the pajé, and we, young people, learn from the pajé. Why did I choose the name “Forest School Village”? Because the village is a school. Because we have everything within our Indigenous territory.

Isael Maxakali

Bahserikowi, Center of Indigenous Medicine – Tukano-Desana-Tuyuka Living School

Coordinators: João Paulo Tukano, Ivan Tukano, and Carla Wisu

The Bahserikowi Center of Indigenous Medicine is located in downtown Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas. The establishment of Bahserikowi in Manaus was a strategic choice to engage universities and public institutions, and to promote respect for Indigenous medicine. Today, Bahserikowi is a national reference in health care based on genuinely Indigenous technologies. The specialists working at the Center, the kumuã, come from the Yepamahsã (Tukano), Utãpirõ-Porã (Tuyuka), and Umukori-Mahsã (Desana) peoples, from the Indigenous communities of Alto Rio Tiquié, a tributary of the Uaupés river, in the Alto Rio Negro region. Care is provided to the general public, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. The kumu, a healing specialist, is available to receive people and care for them with medicinal plants and bahsese, also known as ritual blessings.

I come from a family of yaiwa and kumuã specialists. And today we are the founders of the first Bahserikowi Center of Indigenous Medicine in Amazonas. We are also a reference center for other Indigenous peoples, so that they can look to us as an example and thus create their own spaces for health care and healing.

João Paulo Tukano

Madzerokai, House of Ancestral Knowledge – Baniwa Living School

Coordinators: Francy Baniwa and Francisco Fontes Baniwa

The Escola Viva Baniwa was born from the work done over six years of research and writing for the book Umbigo do mundo [Navel of the World], published by Dantes Editora in 2023. The book was written by Francy Baniwa in dialogue with her father, Francisco Luiz Fontes Baniwa (Matsaape), narrator of traditional oral histories, and features 74 watercolor illustrations by her brother Frank Fontes Baniwa (Hipattairi). The Baniwa Living School thus came into being through the narratives that guide us in living well, and today it stands as a major achievement for the Baniwa people, who live in the Northwestern Amazon, in the Alto Rio Negro Indigenous Land, in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira, in Amazonas. 

The Baniwa Living School is distinguished by its communal work with strong involvement from the whole community, as well as agricultural and planting activities, transmission of diverse knowledge to younger generations, appreciation for knowledge holders, exchanges with the formal school system in the territory, and the activation of a new community space for carrying out activities and fostering the awakening of ancestral memories.

Everything we are and what we do in the community, within our homes, is a living school. All basket weaving, the art of cutting palm leaves, of fishing, of cleaning fish, of tending the garden—everything. My father is a living school. My uncles and teachers are living schools. Every garden is a living school.

Francy Baniwa

The Grandparents are the guardians of good and beautiful messages that are breathed into words, told through ancient narratives, or transformed into arts that invigorate our path through life. To invoke the Grandparents, to listen to them and witness their activations, is to access other codes and to feel the ancestry that inhabits their ancient messages. When a grandfather takes up his maracá and sings prayers of healing and protection, or when the grandmothers welcome newborn babies into the world with their chants, they are building bridges between the human world and the world of spirits.

For the exhibition Viva Viva Escola Viva [Long Live the Living School], we invited a few grandparents to bring forth the strength of ancestral memory: Ehuana Yanomami, Tõrãmʉ Kẽhíri (Luiz Lana), Moisés Piyãko, and Ailton Krenak. They are keepers of the delicate wisdom of those who seek to feel their own shadow.

Ehuana Yanomami 

Ehuana Yaira Yanomami is a Yanomami leader, artist, researcher, and mother of four children. She was born, raised, and had her children in the Amazon rainforest, in the Demini region of Amazonas, where she lives to this day. Around the age of ten, she began studying at her community’s Indigenous school, where she learned to write in her native language, Yanomae. Ehuana became the first teacher in her community in 2010, when she began participating in various research projects and book productions in Yanomae, including writing Yipimuwi thëã oni: palavras escritas sobre menstruação [Words Written About Menstruation] (Saberes Indígenas, 2017). Through these projects, she began illustrating books, revealing her talent as an artist. Since 2017, she has been creating drawings and paintings portraying her everyday life as a woman of the forest. She also draws inspiration from dreams, due to her strong dreaming abilities as the daughter of a shaman. 

Ehuana stands out as one of the few female leaders among the Yanomami and has gained increasing recognition for coordinating the Yanomami Women’s Gathering, held annually in the Yanomami Indigenous Land. In addition, she participates in events for non-Indigenous audiences, where she speaks about the strength of Yanomami women, the struggles against illegal mining and for the health of her people, and the defense of the forest where she was born, raised, and is now raising her children. 

If you see the way that we Yanomami think, if you see it, you will help us. I think about this when I make my art.

Ehuana Yanomami 

Tõrãmʉ Kẽhíri (Luiz Lana)

Tõrãmʉ Kẽhíri, known as Luiz Gomes Lana, is an Indigenous writer recognized for committing the mythology of the Desana people to paper. He was born in 1947 in the community of São João Batista, on the banks of the Tiquié river, in the Alto Rio Negro Indigenous Land in Amazonas. Throughout his life, he became an important Indigenous leader in the region.

In 1980, Luiz Lana published Antes o mundo não existia [The World Did Not Exist Before], written together with his father, Umúsin Panlõn Kumu, also known as Firmiano Arantes Lana. Anthropologist Berta Ribeiro typed and revised the book from Luiz’s handwritten manuscript. Years later, the book was republished in a new edition by Dantes Editora as part of the Selvagem collection, including revised terminology and new illustrations by the author.

In 1990, he founded the União das Nações Indígenas do Rio Tiquié (Unirt) [Union of Indigenous Nations of the Tiquié River], which brought together not only the Desana community but also the Tukano, Bará, and Barasana peoples. 

If there is a thread of memory, Tõrãmʉ holds it in his hands and can unravel it toward another world, before the world existed.

Tõrãmʉ Kẽhíri showed us that the questions “Who am I?” and “Where do I come from?” are mysteries only to white people, for he knew his origins very well. He came from the stars; he was a Kẽhíríporã, child of the dream drawing, of the Desana people, or Ʉmʉkomahsã, the people of the universe, descendants of Yebá Buró, the grandmother of the world.

Moisés Piyãko 

Moisés Piyãko is a respected spiritual leader of the Ashaninka people, living in the village of Apiwtxa, in the Kampa do Rio Amônia Indigenous Land, in Acre, Brazil. He is a guardian of ancestral knowledge, culture, and the forest, transmitting teachings about the history of his people, spirituality, and the relationship with nature. 

The Living School… today, many people are becoming interested in learning and understanding what this is, in order to experience it for themselves. Also in order to have more respect. Often, they are not to blame, because people sometimes don’t understand, don’t know how to respect, don’t know how to go about it. Now the time is coming when people have the chance to understand what this is. I see that our Living School did not begin here […] it is very ancient.

Moisés Piyãko

Ailton Krenak 

Ailton Krenak is a thinker, environmentalist, and one of the leading voices of Indigenous knowledge. Together with Dantes Editora, he created Selvagem – ciclo de estudos sobre a vida [Selvagem – a cycle of studies on life]. He lives in the Krenak village, on the banks of the Doce river in Minas Gerais. He is the author of the books Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo [Ideas to Postpone the End of the World] (2019), O amanhã não está à venda [Tomorrow Is Not For Sale] (2020), A vida não é útil [Life Is Not Useful] (2020), and Futuro ancestral [Ancestral Future] (2022), published by Companhia das Letras, in addition to Um rio um pássaro [A River A Bird], by Dantes Editora. In 2022, he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

We are not talking about school education here. For those observing from afar, it may seem that we are developing a pedagogical project, an educational plan for our communities or for non-Indigenous people. But it is none of that. This is an experience of supporting the women and men who are masters of ancestral knowledge, those who live the practice of making and doing. Our support exists so that they may continue transmitting their knowledge.

Ailton Krenak, in the Selvagem Notebook O coração expandido das Escolas Vivas [The Living Schools’ Expanded Heart]

Without land, our way of teaching cannot exist. Without land, our way of healing cannot exist. Because we fought to reclaim the land. We fulfilled our dream, and now we are going to create many projects upon the land. Upon our land. 

Why do we call it Forest School Village? Because in a village, everything is a “classroom”. Wherever there are trees and shade is a “classroom”. The children sing our rituals. They follow along. By the river, they play, sing and write in the sand. Everything within the village is a “classroom”. All the men go into the forest, singing. They gather wood while singing. That is why we chose the name Forest School Village, because the entire village is a school. Wherever there is shade, the women gather to make handicrafts. The children come and sit beside them, listening and learning as well. The whole village is a school. Wherever there is a ritual house, that is a true and very important school. There will be songs, stories, culture, and traditional food. We, the community of the Forest School Village, want land for the Yãmĩyxop, for the children, for the future. Because we are born with the forest; we are born with the hunt. 

This land is our mother because it nourishes all of us. Our songs chronicle every hunt. We have lost animals, but the songs preserve them. And the drawings also represent the animals. We have lost great animals, but we still preserve their names. Our songs speak their names. 

We, the Maxakali people, are sufferers, but our Yãmĩy walk beside us. Every day the Yãmĩy accompany me, and all the Maxakali people.

Why do I say Forest School Village?

If I leave here and go into the forest, my Yãmĩy accompanies me, and I sing as I walk through the woods. If I play in the river, another Yãmĩy will accompany me. I will imitate any animal—fish, caiman, swallow—I will sing their songs. That’s why we call it Forest School Village. Here, my home is a school, because we are passing our knowledge on to the young people who are now learning.

We are teachers. We are speaking. They are listening to our words. We hold onto good words in order to preserve our memory, so that it does not fall away. It must grow. We must have different kinds of knowledge, gather other forms of knowledge, so that the Forest School Village may grow.

Our dream is to reclaim the land and restore it. Because it needs healing; it needs care. Because the land is alive. The land speaks, the land watches us, and the land cries out. But the farmer does not hear what the land is crying out, that it needs help. That is why we want to reforest it and build the Forest School Village.

Isael Maxakali