Indigenous Literature
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“Mapuana… have you listened to the silence that flowers in spring? / …the silence that brings ancestral smiles to the lips of children / …that makes sound spring from the depths of the earth /... -
Homeland of the Inkas, house of wisdom, / purified by koka leaves, / infused with the energy of the k’intu. // Homeland animated with the Inka’s breath, / made sacred by the smoke of llama’s chest, /... -
The Shuar were a group of interethnic communities and societies among the constellations who lived in harmony with the animals and collectively respected life on earth for the sake of nature. However,... -
Cries of a woman / like howls of Mother Earth / when someone lacerates her blossoms, / when someone hurts her flesh. // Cries of a woman / like the weeping of a river / when someone breaks her childre... -
Little Tankar of thorny head, / ice crystals like a white sun / fall from my eyes / over desolated regions, where the Orqos lives, / over pristine waters born in the Wanchuy tree.... -
In that small town of Sapilica there lived a thieving woman, and she died in a terrible way, bewitched, because of her sin of thieving. That woman was called Isabela, and she had been a thief ever sin... -
Every morning the church bells would wake me. The first time I heard them, I desired to always be awakened like the arijunas, far from the crow of the roosters and the cluck of the hens, far from the... -
This micro-fiction contest was organized by the group of digital activists “Quri Q’intisitus” in order to learn about the cultural practices of the carnival festival in the different regions of Bolivi... -
Make yourself earth. / We will put wind in your navel / and sea between your legs. // Make yourself light and stars. / I’ll pass the night in sky-blue dreams to be unseen. // Make yourselves fishes, a... -
How dare you call us poor today / when you were the one who snatched our lands? // How dare you call us ugly / when you were the one who raped our women? // How dare you call us lazy / when you were... -
The official history and the literature of Brazil have produced and reproduced silences and stereotypes surrounding indigenous peoples. There have been so many attempts to stifle our voices that to sp... -
I sing of sorrow / from exile / weaving a necklace / many histories / and different peoples // In each birth / and song of farewell, / of mother earth, I ask refuge / of brother son, more energy / an... -
I must set this story free on the four winds, this artifice that led my life to bloom, for it is my muse and point of origin from which to carry out mortal, diabolical acts. I know not how it happened... -
In the immensity of the Amazon rainforest, amid the babbling water and the birdsong, there is a river called Igara Paraná, a branch of the Putumayo, which expands into a lake. This place is known as t... -
Juvenal walked across the foot of that hill amid the silence. Suddenly he noticed the fresh blood that was falling from his nose like rain. He felt a chill inside him: “Suq!” It seemed his heart was a... -
They embroider / the clothing of every animal: / to the sheep / they give cotton / so it may be cloud's brother, / for the racoon, the name gòn' / and with the mask / they remind it that its... -
Hubert Matiúwàa is a poet of considerable agility. In 2016 his first book, Xtámbaa / Piel de Tierra, introduced us to a vertiginous voice which gallops forcefully in light of the violence and s... -
The problem came with its dead, / lots of abuse for not speaking the language. / There was always a reason / to strip our mountain from us piece by piece,they said: / “We ought to leave the eye of Xtó... -
It can take days to climb a mountain, or the blink of an eye. On the way, the mountain will show you, little by little, her body. What makes her habitable in spite of her inhospitality. At her peak, y... -
While it is true that every human group is constructed at the same time as it is territorialized in a given geographic space/time, it is equally true that every human group is only shaped as a culture... -
Our language speaks from the heart / we have ch'ulel and we fly in dreams. / We sing with the wind and laugh with the clouds / we plant the corn and harvest the tortillas. // When I am happy... -
When you call me / I’ll go, get into the boat / that waits to carry me across those waters / that drag away everything in their path. // The day you call me / my soul will rejoice, / taking on the co... -
When the wind’s mouth arches like a bird of time, / filtered by cracks in the mysteries, / I hear a drumbeat growing on the wings of a memory / that fills the sails of thoughts from out of the blue si... -
The writers assembled in this publication all come from different places, each one contributing from the perspective of their own experiences, histories, genders, and ethnicities. As readers who also... -
Kamaniantika, nokineke matinejnemikan san tajuamej.
