Work · Indigenous Philosophies
Ideas to Postpone the End of the World
Short texts based on talks and interviews of 2017–2019, among them a lecture in Lisbon, that criticise the idea of a single “humanity” detached from the Earth and see in the stories, rivers and mountains of Indigenous peoples a way to keep the sky from falling.
Introduction
The book appeared in 2019 with Companhia das Letras in São Paulo and was soon widely read; translations into several languages followed, in English in 2020. It is based on talks and interviews from 2017 to 2019, among them a lecture in Lisbon. Krenak asks who belongs to the “humanity” invoked by development and the market: a club that has cut itself off from the Earth and treats it as a resource, while Indigenous peoples and others who live differently are pressed to join it. The poisoning of the Rio Doce, for the Krenak the grandfather Watu, after the dam collapse near Mariana in 2015 serves as an example. To postpone the end of the world is to keep telling stories, to dream and to sustain many forms of life and subjectivity – and, as Krenak says with reference to Yanomami shamans, to keep the sky from falling.
Sources: Wikidata
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