Still from Ava Yvy Vera, 2016.

Guarani-Kaiowá filmmakers Genito Gomes, Jhon Nara Gomes, Valmir Gonçalves Cabreira, Jhonaton Gomes, Joilson Brites, Sarah Brites, Dulcídio Gomes, Edina Ximenez, Anailson Flores, Beibity Flores, Cledson Amarília Ricarte, Jhonlailson Gomes Almeida, Jhon Malison, Jomalis Franco Gomes, and Wagner Gomes, are glad to present, for the first time in English, an intimate testament to their collaborative creative practice and sociopolitical struggles.

With a combined portfolio of six films—comprising a feature and five shorts—their works explore themes of ancestral heritage, displacement, and the steadfast defense of Indigenous territories. The text has been translated in collaboration with Brazilian academic Luciana de Oliveira, filmmaker Bernardo Zanotta and film programmer Elizabeth Dexter.

Genito Gomes and Jhon Nara Gomes live in the ‘retomada’ of Guaiviry Yvy Pyte Y Jere, located in the municipality of Aral Moreira, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. ‘Retomada’ is the word in Portuguese used by Indigenous groups to describe their movement, of the resumption and reestablishment of their own territories and communities. In Guaiviry Yvy Pyte Y Jere, they take care of their territory management, promoting the long-term recovery of Indigenous culture in the area.

We have lost many warriors from our extended family and we would like to register their names: Odúlia Mendes, Nízio Gomes, Jaidi Flores, Valdomiro Flores, Francisco Benites, Ludinaldo Ortiz, Xaveli Ortiz, Vander Flores, Bareilly Ortiz, Josefa Vilhalva, Elvira Ortiz, Ricardo Gomes.

Genito Gomes:I am a leader in tekoha (Indigenous territory) and in the Aty Guasu Guarani-Kaiowa movement, I am part of its council. I am also a filmmaker and an undergraduate student at the Faculdade Intercultural Indígena (FAIND) at the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD).

Jhon Nara Gomes: I am a leader in the Retomada Aty Jovem movement (RAJ) and a youth in the Guaiviry tekoha. I am a filmmaker, writer, designer, storyteller and student at the Ara Vera Intercultural Training Course in Mato Grosso do Sul. Our speech here is true and alive.

Luciana de Oliveira: I arrived in the territory of Guaivyry Yvy Pyte Y Jere in 2012. I lived there in 2018 with my family, when we were co-organizing the book Ñe’ē Tee Rekove | Palavra Verdadeira Viva (2020) which brought to publication a small part of the monumental knowledge of Nhanderu Valdomiro Flores and Nhandesy Tereza Amarília Flores. They taught Kaiowá cosmology courses at the university where I now work (University of Minas Gerais). In 2021, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, Genito and Jhon Nara also taught an online course in the same institutional context as Valdomiro and Tereza. Before 2018, I spent several minor seasons at the tekoha producing cinema workshops (filming and editing) to train young people and leaders through the Imagem Canto Palavra University Extension Program in the Guarani and Kaiowa Territory (2014-2022). I also take care of the films’ distribution, the circulation of books, and at the request of Valdomiro and Tereza, passing on the stories of the Kaiowá people in the best way I can.

Our collaboration in this text is the result of the friendship and trust built in these processes of collaboration, co-creation, of getting to know each other and making our worlds known.

Still from Ava Marangatu, 2016.

Genito Gomes

We were born in our territory, we grew up in our territory. Our Indigenous ancestors were born in this territory, born by Yvy Pyte, born by the heart of the land, born by prayer, here on this land. We, Kaiowá and Guarani, fight for our territory, for our rights. It is not us who started this fight. He who is fighting against us is the white man, fighting to take our territory from us. We didn’t cut through the woods and rivers to get to our territory, we were born here. We are not the ones who arrived in boats and then in airplanes. If this were so, I would agree that we are the ones who fight. If we had arrived to invade the United States or Europe, if we had cut across rivers to get to a place that is not ours, I would agree that the Indigenous people are the ones who had invaded. But, on the contrary, we have always lived in our traditional territory.

When Nhanderu and Nhandesy made the land, first came the mountains that were burned by them three times over. The first time it didn’t work well, the second time it also didn’t, but the third time it did: it worked so well that human beings could plant. To finish this work of the earth, they sent Y (water) and rivers were formed. That is why in our language, Kaiowá, the first thing that is spoken is ‘Y’. Water comes first, it is very sacred, the water cannot be poisoned. Any place that has water is very sacred. We are generated in water and the first thing we receive is water to clean our bodies. Water is our mother. Our mothers are very sacred. Water takes care of us when we are sick, be it through bathing, be it through the medicine we take, be it through the food we prepare.

Rain is also a message from our mother. And water does not hold back, and it is she who is our life. In our ñembo’e puku (long prayer), we remember the creation of the world that was sung, and we still have these songs today. If white people say that there are nine planets, we Kaiowá walk on the fifteen levels that exist above us that we call ‘theta’. Each theta has the right words to talk to the people that live there. The same thing happens here on the land, we have to talk to each other, Indigenous people everywhere, because we are the original people of this land. But we also have to talk to the non-Indigenous (mbayry). This is why we have used technologies of the mbayry. In the same way that praying connects us to various sacred places, we explain to our elders that those technologies also create connections between the people who live on this land that we live on. When we can make that kind of explanation for the two ways of life, we usually say ojopopyhy (the one who makes us hold hands).

Why is that? Because it is the beginning of everything. The beginning of the earth. Yvy.

After, comes ka’aguy yva yvy (land of forest fruits). Yva is fruit. So these things came at the beginning. Water is our mother, without it we cannot live. Our forefathers are part of the land, because the land gives you everything you plant, produce and eat. Our parents always try to do this, what we in Guarani call jeporeka katu pyry, to bring food to our sons and daughters. It is with this kind of wisdom passed on to us by our parents, grandparents, great-great-grandparents that we know how to recognize what our true territory is. My whole background comes from knowing these things. Only I don’t have a certificate given by the Karaí (white people). It is all given by Nhanderu and Nhandesy. My certificate is with me, it is in my speech. It comes from knowing how this land was in the beginning and how it is now, to live with my community and with my people. I received this training.

In the past we lived well, before the Karaí came to our territory. The families were located far away from each other (40 to 50 km). Only later the Brazilian Indigenous Protection Service (SPI) created the reserves, eight reserves. They brought us and allocated everyone inside. All this happened through words exchanged between white people. The Indigenous didn’t have the right to speak. The white people already had everything planned when they created those eight reserves: Dourados, Caarapó, Amambai, Pirajuy, Porto Lindo, Saassoró, Taquepery and Limão Verde. The SPI deceived the Indigenous peoples by saying that the reserves would now be their territory. The government itself sold our lands to several ranchers, allocated them and told the white men: “now nobody can question your ownership because you’ve received these papers from us”. For us, the Indigenous, it was not like that. Where are our papers? Our registration? It is us, ourselves. With our prayer we reach Nhanderu (in our language: ñembo’e ñemongeta or conversation that makes the spirit speak), the owner of the true prayer who made the land, Nhanderu and Nhandesy.

In our knowledge there are several types of spirit beings. It all depends on the prayer that is used and the reason for sending some kind of spirit to a person. An example: when we Kaiowá go fishing, we have to set the pindai (hook) and the nimbó (line), but first we need to pray. We have to study which rod will fit that line and that hook. The fish see everything. To fish, we cast this line and hook into their house, and just as we know everything that is inside our house, so do they. When we pray for the hook, the line, the rod, and our body too, the jari (ancestral grandmother) our river ancestor comes to ask us for something. We give it to her and she will give us the fish we need. We must eat it all, or share it with our neighbors. Not a little piece should be lost, not even the bones. They cannot be simply thrown away, but must be buried with great respect. If a strange person arrives at our house—drunk or on drugs—it is difficult for us to receive them. The same thing happens with the grandmothers of the rivers, because we arrive at their houses and we are strangers. If things are not well negotiated, the person may fish a little, not at all, or something may happen to them—they may fall in the river or have an accident on the way. All this can happen if you do not ask permission.

Another example is when we go into the forest. When we make a house, we use wood. Some say: “I am making the house with masonry”. But it is not only masonry. Somewhere in it there is wood. That is why the forest is our great father and our great mother. Because they give energy to human beings, which is the wood with which we make fire, the wood that we make our houses with. To cut down a tree, we have to ask permission. We have to pray with the axe, sickle, or the machete. White people don’t do this and with their chainsaw, they cut everything down. This is why our great father and mother, as well as the guardians of the forest, take care of all this spiritually. Anything from small accidents to great catastrophes, may come from this disrespect to the spirit of the forest and the animals that protect it as well.

I like to talk about these truths of our Kaiowá culture. Our culture has a law. In general people don’t know that. I appreciate that some universities invite us so we can teach too. My heart is very happy. Because we can talk about very powerful beings. When white people talk about the powerful, they talk about the lawyer—who they call ‘doctor’—the prosecutor, the judge, but they only have power below this law. Our law-reality comes through the spirit and says: these people are nothing to us. Recently in Brazil’s federal congress, people were fighting to approve something against the will of the Indigenous peoples: the temporal landmark. Because they want to make laws that are only valid here on land by kuatiá (paper) and by computer. But our law is stronger because nobody can hold it materially. The great catastrophes of storms, earthquakes and hailstorms are the spirits of the Indigenous peoples. We pray, we make requests, and these spirits come! This, white people don’t know how to do. And if they kill all the Indigenous people, there won’t be any white people left on this earth. Another kind of people might be born, but neither will they survive eventually.

That is why we Kaiowá know our territory well, where our ancestors lived, where they were buried, where our great-grandparents planted manioc, potatoes, avati puku (long corn), avati morotĩ (white corn), cateto corn. That’s why we come back again. To reclaim what is ours. Because justice and politicians are not going to give our territory back. If it is not for us, warriors, and our prayer to return, they will never let us return. Most mayors, judges and deputies, are farmers. The white man does not own this territory. We, the Kaiowá, are the owners. If they kill all the Indigenous people, there will be nobody left. That is why we have courage. I know three ways to cultivate courage. Before my father died, I was afraid to talk to the authorities, anyone from the white world. But after my father passed to another world, his courage was embodied in me. I became brave because my father passed on his courage to me. We returned to our territory Guaiviry Yvy Pyte Y Jere on November 1, 2011 after waiting more than forty years of nobody doing anything. Because even in FUNAI (the National Indigenous Agency) there are farmers. Nísio Gomes (Pa’i Tiryryju), my father, lived only eighteen days in this territory and was murdered. We are not afraid to die, because everybody dies. We also have our ñembo’e (prayers) to give us courage, because prayer makes us hold the knowledge in our brain, in our speech and in our eyes. In Guaraní we say: “omboguapy nderehe nde rete monde va’erã” (“you have to let the sacred clothes settle on your body”). We also have specific prayers like the lightning prayers to give us courage. We are always thinking about our children and the future. Therefore, we take back what is ours.

(Transcription of the class taught by Genito Gomes on 06/02/2021 in the Right to Existence course at the Federal University of Minas Gerais)

Still from Guahuí Guyra Kuera, 2020.

Jhon Nara Gomes

Our struggle is to have land, but not to exploit it or to make money. Our life and our objective is to protect mother earth, to plant on mother earth, to protect the rivers, the fish. Because here, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, we protect the rest of the forest that is left with our lives. For land, the farmers kill us. And if the land is still firm it is because we Kaiowá are praying and making Nhanderu Guasu and Nhandesy Guasu listen to our songs. They are still listening to the sounds of the birds and the sounds of the rivers and that is why the land is still firm. There are white people who judge us because they don’t know our struggle. Some say, if they see us on TV, “ah, it’s the Indian, an Indian is a bum, he is no longer an Indian because he is wearing clothes” and so on. When I talk about our fight, I get very emotional. Because I remember my grandfather, Nísio Gomes, who died at the hands of forty gunmen with three 12-gauge shots in the thigh, chest and head. I was a child of eleven when this happened and it hurts me in my heart, the same way it hurts me to have lost my grandmother, Odúlia Mendes, a great Nhandesy of our people, who died before we could enter and remain in our tekoha.

When I went to Sweden I said to Queen Sophie and her ministers: you should thank the Indigenous people, the reason you are rich is because you stole our riches back in Brazil. The white man says that the Indigenous only want the land to make it dirty, but our interest has never been to take land to plant soybeans and corn so we could generate money for us. Our interest has always been to take the land to plant and to eat. Because we, Indigenous people, don’t go into the forest to kill little animals for nothing. We go into the forest when we need meat. We don’t kill animals for nothing. We only cut down trees to build houses. The white man doesn’t do that. The land is ours and this is written in the prayer. And I say that the spirits are also with us. Invisible beings that we don’t see, like lightning, like an earthquake, something for which we do not know the owner. But there are spiritual beings that are making white people pay for their mistakes. It’s not from yesterday that we are judged and discriminated against (Jhon Nara participated in the World’s Children’s Prize organized with the support of the Swedish Queen – www.worldschildrensprize.org).

My grandfather’s death taught me that here in Brazil we have to lose our lives to recover our land. That is why we launched the film Ava Yvy Vera(2016). Because this film shows how the dream of my grandfather Nízio remains alive here in Tekoha Guaiviry. Our story has no end. It has a beginning and a middle, but no end. We made this film by filming what we do each day in the Guaiviry tekoha. The film portrays an image of how we live here in our tekoha. First, Nísio’s dream and the dream of Mr. Valdomiro Flores—one of our great healers —who has also passed to the invisible world. He died a short time ago, in 2017. But the dreams of both remain alive.

In Nísio’s case, the dream was to return to the old tekoha of his ancestors to raise again the house of prayer, the culture, our drinks, the kagwin, our Indigenous foods, baked fish with manioc, all this was Nízio’s dream. So the film Ava Yvy Vera shows this. There is the prayer house, the women, the children dancing the kotyhu. With the film, we also show why we fight for the land.

At the end of the movie there is our long prayer that we do every Thursday and it starts at sunrise, around 5 pm. The prayers, the youth and the children go into the prayer house where everything happens for one whole night. The prayer is sung until dawn. Until the sun comes out again and gives the aguyje in the prayer which is like the closing of a meeting with a request to our great father Nhanderu while the sun is rising. After that, the people, especially the men and women praying, go to drink mate (which is also shown in the movie). In the movie we also show the thunder rays. The rays are like us: they also dress, paint themselves… Only we don’t see them because our eyes are not clean, because it is necessary to have an eye that grows with you through prayer and its constant practice. That is why only those who pray can see them. Other people might see them but not understand them. This is why we have and continue to learn technologies such as filming, to use it to our advantage, asking permission from the rays that are, like us, the word of Nhanderu and Nhandesy, to incorporate it into our culture and our struggle.

The lightning bolts are those that come here on earth as if they were filmmakers sent from Nhanderu Guasu and Nhandesy Guasu: “look, go film what is happening there, on the earth where human beings live, and bring it to me”. This is why when we are going to film the lightning we have to ask for permission through prayer to capture its image because otherwise the camera might burn. This is also why sometimes we hear that lightning has struck a person. But it is because this person did not ask Nhanderu for permission to capture the image of the lightning. We did everything right and that is why we were able to show the thunder in our film.

In the middle of the film there is my uncle, Valmir Gonçalves Cabreira, together with my brother Johnathan, talking, sitting with a white candle nearby. That place was where Nísio fell. The candle that appears lit in front of them is on the spot where the head of my grandfather Nísio Gomes fell. Our intention was to show it to the world, so that people can understand that we are not fighting for nothing. At the beginning of the film you can see the big soybean field of the Karaí. A shot filmed by Valmir. That scene really happened when my grandfather and the others took back Guaiviry. In it appears the soybean and a lone tree that was used as a cell phone tower so that he could pass information to the authorities and to the other relatives. So the film shows all of this. An arc between Nísio’s death and Nísio’s dream, as well as the Thursday prayer that will always remain. Because the film also shows Seu Valdomiro, my cousin Francisco and my cousin Jaíde who have already passed into the invisible world.

So when someone watches this film, it seems that people are still alive. Because it is also a record that we leave behind, so that one day, as time goes by and the years go by, and we are no longer here, this film will continue, it will go down in history. Young people and children will see it and understand our struggle, everything we went through, so that they can understand history through this image. It is a very strong film that speaks to us through images. We also didn’t make this film like the Karaí film. Often, when a white man goes to make a film, he plans everything in advance. We don’t plan. When the cinema workshop took place in 2014, we learned how to hold the camera, learning and filming. It wasn’t planned. We took a camera and filmed, many times without a tripod, with our own hands. We filmed for many hours and we went into the middle of the bush, in the middle of the soybean monoculture. We were in danger because filming in these places is indeed dangerous. The farmer would kill whoever was in the middle of his soybean field.

Making films makes us very strong. This film makes us very strong. What you see in the film is what we live here in Tekoha Guaiviry. In fact, the filmmaker who is sent by Nhanderu and Nhandesy receives an order more or less like this: they are going to film in order to know what is happening to my children of the land. They come to film everything with an invisible camera. And we can’t even see them because they are completely invisible. That’s why we can’t see the rays properly because they have that brightness. When the lightning comes, it gives off that glow. They come to film everything that happens in this world, they film everything that happens to the Indigenous people and then they come back to show everything that happens to Nhanderu and Nhandesy. Then they watch these images to see how we are doing. Only praying men and women, who know the true prayer, are able to enter dialogue about these events. Because they can sing the prayer and with it build steps to climb to the theta, where they live.

Many times we Indigenous people receive images from Nhanderu and Nhandesy about what is going to happen with the white man, be it in the prayer, be it messages that are activated by the prayer and that we receive in a dream. We pray at a certain moment, telling him that we want to talk, and then in the dream we talk. As in the world he is invisible, we see him in the dream. Then when we wake up we tell him: look, I dreamt about the white man, that a storm was going to come, that an earthquake was going to come, and that it is going to happen like this. This is how the connection with Nhanderu and Nhandesy happens. So the lightning, these filmmakers that come, he doesn’t show us the images just like that up there. The lightning is shining and we already see an image. But it is the lightning that comes, and if it has something to say, that message only comes in sleep. For example, now it looks like it’s going to rain and I’m going to see some lightning. Then I will go to sleep and dream about something. It is a sign that the lightning is showing me an image. When I go to the bush I don’t see like a young white man, who is only seeing the river and the trees, I feel everything alive. It’s like people dancing and singing and talking out loud to me. White men don’t know how to hold this kind of conversation with our enchanted beings. I feel the wind and see it swaying the leaves on the trees, and to me it is as if it is talking to me—messages that can be happy or sad. The owners of the waters are also very important and they can tell us many things. We go to the river and they tell us, but we only understand later through dreams. These beings—the masters and mistresses of the things of this world, and the lightning—can also come down to earth. But they change clothes and appear to us like any other person. If these people ask us for anything, we should give it to them, because they can be ordinary people or they can be messengers from Nhanderu and Nhandesy. I learned from the elders of my tekoha that this voice is from the spirits that teach and guide us.

(Transcription of the class taught by Jhon Nara Gomes on 06/02/2021 in the Right to Existence course at the Federal University of Minas Gerais)

Still from Yvy Pyte, 2019.

Luciana de Oliveira

How to make neighborly relations between worlds happen through cinema? How to break the colonization that permeates us all, including (and strongly present) in the university? In other words, how to answer the call of an Indigenous people? These questions took shape when, in 2013, we proposed the Extension Program Imagem Canto Palavra no Território Guarani e Kaiowá (Ta’anga Mburahei Ñe’e Guarani ha Kaiowa Tekoha Guasupe), and with it a chance to articulate research, and communicational action, in support of generating visibility towards the Indigenous struggle for land.

Following the protocols of the Western tradition in which I was trained, I immediately thought of an entry through history: to understand the successive forms of land grabbing represented by public policies or political decisions, the private actions of companies, settlers and landowners. To understand the creation of the Brazil-Paraguay border: the religious missions and reductions; the Land Law of 1850; the War between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance; the formation of reservations for the Kaiowa and Guarani peoples between the years 1910 and 1928; the industrial exploitation of erva mate started at the end of the 19th century and extended until the 1930s; the extraction of wood; the westward march; the formation of agricultural colonies; and, finally, the formation of large agribusiness farms—events that conform to what historian Antônio Brand (1993; 1997) has called territorial confinement. This part of the path was useful, though it fueled my research to understand the historical foundations and the legal bases of land claims addressed to the Federal Government and of land retakings or reoccupations. Even more, to understand the meanings of the return—jaike jevy (Benites, 2014)—to the original territories that began to occur on a larger scale in the 1980s and extend to the present day. Through the initiative of some extended families, this return is based on a great political movement and the generation of a sense of the collective, especially supported by the cantos-reza or mburahei. From there also derive a set of actions in the field of ways of seeing that are characteristic of the Western world, indigenizing them (Sahlins, 1996) in favor of another visibility. This turn has a lot to do with the organization of the Indigenous movements in the American continent and in Brazil. More specifically, the great landmark of this moment was the organization of the Aty Guasu—a Great Assembly of the Guarani-Kaiowá Peoples that began to take place in 1979 (Benites, 2014; Almeida, 2001).

But the entrance through cinema only really made sense in the preparation meetings for the implementation of the program (January, April, July, and November 2014), in the Guaiviry tekoha, with Valdomiro Flores and Tereza Amarília Flores, leaders and young people, and in the Jaguapiré tekoha, with leaders/teachers such as Tonico, Onides, and Adão Benites, and the healers Vanildo and Luís in whose speeches they emphasized:

1) the confidence in the register that comes with the emphatic affirmation of the healers that they would like to “keep forever” their prayers, words, and knowledge;

2) the need to create bonds between “the curiosity of young people with the things of the karaí”, regarding technology and the language of cinema, with “the wisdom of the old men and women healers”, the living encyclopedias of a knowledge and their memory-bodies full of testimonies, stories, chants, prayers, and myths;

3) the elective affinity between the audiovisual and the performances of orality, both modes of knowledge transmission that dispense with writing;

4) the affirmation of a know-how and a know-how-to-know that, shared and in alliance, becomes a collective gain for all parties;

5) the possibility of affirming the original language, despite the efforts that translation requires to give form and strength to inter-world encounters and the expansion of borders to the audience, in addition to obviating that this is not an Indigenous cinema, but a hybrid one, a cinema that is an encounter of knowledge, that is a cosmopolitical forum (Oliveira, 2016).

Such conversations made it more concrete how filmmaking could assist in what I call a triple task for the Kaiowá and Guarani peoples: the invention of culture (in the sense that Wagner, 2010, gives to this expression) and of their ways of life; the defense of their territories and ways of existing in an environment that is hostile to them in many ways; and the enlargement of the public arena to fit their worlds and the agencies, times and spaces that they mobilize in regimes of visibility and genocidal, epistemicidal and cosmicidal political forms. In the process of being made, films are events that put us in touch with this triple labor.

It made sense then to enter through cinema. Cinema as a shared practice offered not only the El Dorado of visibility—the promise of almost all the good souls who visit the tekoha in Mato Grosso do Sul and engage at different levels in relevant support for the land struggle: photographers, artists, journalists, intellectuals, activists. This input proved to be a great enhancer of research and of the construction of cinematographic and inter-epistemic knowledge relations. In this path, we could imitate the life of the images modulated by the Kaiowá traditional knowledge and given agency by people and their communities—both the community in its daily constitution poetic and existentially full of multiple agencies, temporalities and spatialities and the community experience that involves the collective making of cinema—in a radical pragmatics when observing that the expressive resources of regimes of knowledge that perhaps are based more on relations with the invisible unfold in a great subjective and collective power making other forms of the common (Oliveira; Vasquez, 2018).

Genito Gomes, Jhon Nara Gomes and Luciana de Oliveira

Translated by Luciana de Oliveira, Elizabeth Dexter and Bernardo Zanotta

Works Cited

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