A year after her experience in the studio, in 2022, Célia Xakriabá became a Federal Congresswoman elected for the state of Minas Gerais and, probably, the youngest indigenous parliamentarian in the world. Teacher, anthropologist, and congresswoman, she often says that culture lent her to politics. From the collective experiences in the fields, Xakriabá goes far, making her journey an action conscious of her power to fight against the coloniality that continues to structure relationships in Brazilian society. Without ever forgetting the ground from which she comes from and carrying the strength of her ancestry, she continues to “indigenize” the decision-making and representation spaces he covers, where indigenous peoples were previously made invisible.

As a schoolteacher in the Xakriabá territory, she uses chalk to teach about indigenous culture. Academic anthropologist, the first indigenous person in a doctorate course at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), carries in her body-territory the graphisms of body painting and the traditional sciences of her people into the university environment. In the indigenous movement, marching side by side with other women originating from the different territorialities of the various Brazilian biomes, they have proven to be the seeds of the sprouting of a new thought, a new time, an ancestral future, where nature and spirituality are respected and built good living in commitment to healing the Earth.

In the past, the Xakriabá people, belonging to the Macro-Jê linguistic group, lived in various regions of the São Francisco Valley. Violently repressed and after countless conflicts over time, they were settled and forced to adopt the Portuguese language and other aspects of the colonizer's culture. Today they live in the cerrado of northern Minas Gerais, in the small Xakriabá Indigenous Land, approved at the end of the decade and located in the border area between the municipalities of Itacarambi and São João das Missões. Around 8,000 people live there and even today, without access to the São Francisco river, a fundamental element of Xakriabá spirituality and culture, they are fighting to expand their territory in order to gain access to the water.

In her unique way of speaking, Célia demonstrates that singing cannot be done alone. Its powerful orality, originating from the melody of the Xakriabá language and learned through coexistence with older leaders, expands our worldviews like an arrow aimed at the awakening of our humanity.

In THE FUTURE IS ANCESTRAL, the manifesto signed by Célia, the notion of future is brought to the present in reconciliation with the past, since we need to build today what we dream of, an action that requires intense involvement in the dialogue established with different cosmologies and appreciation of indigenous wisdom in favor of social transformation projects and emancipatory and democratic practices.

As Célia says in the documentary: The singing of indigenous peoples is a song from the past in the present, but it is mainly a song that we want to keep in the future. [...] In this call, we have to not only reforest the sound; we have to reforest the thought, our sense of being in the world. Do you know the best way to save music? It's by planting it inside people.

THE FUTURE IS ANCESTRAL MANIFESTO

In the diversity of the country where culture is expressed, many people wonder where Brazil begins

Is it really in Brasilia, where power and social inequality prevail, or is it in the territory of the traditional people?

The answer is clear, but the struggle of these warrior people is made invisible. Maybe we don't contribute to making Brazil a first world country, but in Brazil we are the first

We won't contribute in this way, where culture is swallowed up and killed, where value is in money, if you don't have it then you are worth nothing

Today I still remember the parables of a leader, because words like that I keep as a legacy

One day he was asked what the fence was like, what the territory was like in the old days, because these lands were ours and we shared them with many people.

He soon replied, the territory is full of science, the limit of a land is in our conscience

Our traditional knowledge has not been taken into account, we are being suffocated by the National Congress.

Urucum and Jenipapo, strength is standing, what sustains us is the strength of the Pajé

What guides us is spirituality, it's here now Warriors of Ancestry

Let's keep fighting, microphone, maraca and Nhandesys, the power of the word Xakriabá and Guarani

We are a people who resist through the power of song

Before the Brazil of the Crown there is the Brazil of the Headdress!

We provoke them to leave the 4 time and enter another time of more sensitive listening, with more sensitivity

We can even play in the 4 times, but let it be the time of nature

The time of the waters, the drought, the cold... it's different, it's the time of the wind

Our struggle is to regain time and not really struggle against it.

To find the rhythm of song and music is to have a hunter's eye, to get the tone right.

How to touch people without deforesting? It's decolonizing, it's reforesting the sound

The construction of this work was built by the script of the heart with lots of hands

The womb of the Earth guided us

Our wish is that, through music, people will smile again to the point where they can leave the concert with their souls still dancing.

That humanity understands how important it is to fly and to take care of the place where we're standing.

So that we can regain the meaning of life and our hearts will continue to beat

We are the possibility of healing the planet to end all evil

We are the root of the past that connects with today and the Future is Ancestral

The Future is Ancestral