“Be aware that in my country, every time an elder dies, a library is set alight,” said the great Malian intellectual, Amadou Hampaté Bâ in 1962. The statement was in response to an American senator who accused Africans of being “ungrateful, illiterate and ignorant” during a session of UNESCO’s Executive Council.
Hampaté Bâ’s point helps us understand the centrality of the figure of the elder within oral societies, transmitting their knowledge and history through the spoken word. This applies to Amazonian forest peoples – indigenous, forest peasant or maroon descendants – as well as to all other traditional communities and peoples in Brazil who have in their elders sources of knowledge, moral authority, as well as political and spiritual guidance. The elders’ knowledge of their peoples’ history and territory has guaranteed land recognition by the State and informs forest peoples of their roots in a fast-changing world. And not just forest peoples: increasingly, researchers from different areas have consulted these specialists about a wide array of subjects including history, flora, fauna, traditional technologies and indigenous languages – some on the brink of extinction. It is these elders who have been the first to die of covid-19.
It is these elders who have been the first to die of covid-19.
We have been watching genocide happen in real time. In June, information from the Special Indigenous Health Districts (DSEI) of the Brazilian Amazon showed that the Tapajós River, in the southern Brazilian Amazon, had the highest mortality rates of all indigenous health districts in Brazil. Then, the Munduruku people witnessed an increase of more than 300% in the number of deaths within their territory. Since May, covid has taken the lives of 13 Munduruku and one Apiaká on the middle and upper reaches of the river. Twelve of them were elders. Jerônimo Manhuary (86) died on May 10, Angélico Yori (76) on May 22 and Raimundo Dace (70) on May 26. On the first five days of June, Vicente Saw (71), Amâncio Ikõ (59), Arcelino Dace (77), Francidalva Saw (40), Martinho Borõ (77), Benedito Karo (70) and Bernardo Akay also died. Amália Poxo, Joaquim Poxo (88) and Apolônia Apiaká died between June 17 and 22, and Elinaldo Kirixi (50) on July 9.
