Photography - ISSUE #12
Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá is an anthropologist and photographer from the Xakriabá people, Minas Gerais, Brazil. His work explores the Indigenous gaze as an instrument of struggle and resistance.
Even before the invasion of our territories, our ancestors (the old trunks) warned about the ‘time of now’. In Brazil, Indigenous people are experiencing a drama caused by the policies of the extermination of nature, and the traditional peoples that inhabit it, by the government [referring to the 2019-2022 administration]. In the face of all this, Indigenous peoples once again find themselves struggling with the threat of an imminent genocide, where invaders kill bodies, wisdom, humans, non-humans, nature and culture in the name of a (capitalist) system that progressively shows itself doomed to failure.
Through various means and possibilities, a new tool of struggle emerges, the audiovisual, specifically the photographic image, seen by many Indigenous communities as a “necessary evil”. On one hand, the arrival of these new technologies is seen as a bad influence on the culture of the people, while on the other hand, there is a certain desire to use this new “weapon” to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples.
Ethnovision