Indigenous Literature
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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. -
I was inspired to write by nonexistence, by a deep emptiness I saw in Quechua literature: the thought-feeling of the Kañaris, as a people with a living voice. I felt that, faced with literature, we we... -
Poetry is an experience of language designed to think-feel the present, a philosophy built to introduce us to the world. Edwin Lucero Rinza writes Quechua poetry in order to think-feel... -
Pachamama qami kawsayta munankiQam llakinki nuqakunapaqQam waqanki nuqakunapaqQam llakimankillapaQam waran waran chapamankillapa -
It is a tremendous honor to publish these poems by the Maya poets Humberto Ak’abal and Negma Coy, two of the participants at the V Encuentro Continental Intercultural de Literaturas Amerindias (EILA)... -
It is a tremendous honor to publish these poems by the Maya poets Humberto Ak’abal and Negma Coy, two of the participants at the V Encuentro Continental Intercultural de Literaturas Amerindias (EILA)... -
Oh, Sinamaica! How to describe youCaribbean maiden with indigenous featuresPrincess of the lakeSpoiled daughter of the sun’s rays -
If you could string up your neckWith the braids you wove slowlyYou wouldIf you could paint your blood greenAnd dye red the blue sea -
Over a decade ago, while I was preparing a conference in New York City for an indigenous researchers meeting, I was examining photographs that could help me illustrate the paradoxes surrounding the hi... -
I was looking for her, and I love the beautiful girl from Winkua for many reasons. One of them is her name: Jayariyú, or “Jaya” as we call her, which evokes my little sister’s original name, Jayarra....
