ABSTRACT
I remember going to visit an abandoned Kayapó village site near Conceição do Araguaia, in July of last year. I was guided there by Beptopoop, a wise and respected shaman and tradition-knower from Gorotire village, and one of my most beloved mentors. The old village had been abandoned for 40 or 50 years, but Beptopoop, who had known the village as a child, was able to show us medicinal roots, edible tubers, fruits and nuts that had been planted decades earlier by his grandparents. After all those years the forest still reflected the indigenous hands that had moulded it. The forest path, however, soon took us to the other side of the old site. There we encountered, as far as the eye could see, burned vegetation and gigantic charred trees reduced to useless, bleak memorials of the rich and productive forest where Beptopoop’s grandparents once planted their yams, bananas, cotton, beans, squash, corn and pumpkin. Beptopoop exclaimed, waving his arms: ‘Why do the white men burn all of this, destroying it all, and then not even plant anything to feed their children? Do they not know that their children and their children’s children must have food to eat? I am too old to understand any of this!’
