The awareness of life is based on language, a huge puzzle of meanings that are entangled, forming a lens through which we perceive the past, the present, the future and the invisible. Here, at the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, along the Xingu River and its main tributary, the Iriri, traces of a lost population are found. The drawings carved on the rocks stand as an abandoned tale, voices that we no longer know how to decipher.
A language can be a map or a memory. A cosmology or a requiem. As a language becomes extinct, only the silence of the stones remains. There are about 7,000 languages in the world, most of which are spoken by indigenous peoples. Most of the dying ones are also spoken by indigenous peoples. They are oral, without grammar or dictionaries. Knowledge is passed down from person to person. According to a 2014 report (Loh, Harmon), 25% of languages are now in danger of extinction, a higher percentage than mammals (21%), reptiles (15%) or birds (13%).
The decline in linguistic diversity is linked to social, political and economic behaviors, such as forced migrations and urbanization. The journey of the Kuruaya indigenous group highlights all of those factors. First, they lost their territories when they were pursued by missionaries and settlers in the early 20th century. In 1934, there were about 30 indigenous Kuruaya left, near a place called Gorgulho do Barbado (Handbook of South American Indians, Smithsonian Institute, 1948). Those who survived, escaped in a small boat, and travelled downstream until they reached the city of Altamira, in Brazil.
