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Suny Kokama, Oral presentation. Psychology and Human Rights Conference at UFAM, in July 2023
The Western world’s mode of organization and understanding detaches us from the Other, from the territory, from what is not visible. It detaches us from the collectivity and from any understanding that does not fit within a perspective of linear causality. In original people cosmologies, life is intrinsically and deeply connected with other elements of the universe. They are the Amerindian cosmopolitics. In them, it is seen that living and non-living beings (forests, rivers, animals, wind, rain, celestial bodies, musical instruments, clay) are recognized as endowed with subjectivity and action (Tugny 2009).
An account presented by the indigenous Suny Kokama, from the Alto Solimões region in Amazonas, is exemplary in terms of challenging the rupture with the Cartesian paradigm and other biases restricted to western modernity. Suny completed a master’s degree in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Amazonas. Her ethnic group was one of those that suffered most from the historic genocide of indigenous peoples. In the COVID-19 Pandemic, 75, among 95 elders of his people, taking with them history, ancestral knowledge, language. The Kokama language was on the brink of extinction, which is why Suny researched the use of music in Kokama women’s daily lives. Among traditional populations, knowledge is transmitted orally, with many of them through songs. Suny presented the report of women when making pots (pote).
The Kokama women, my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, they were singing to remove the clay and caripé (wood bark) to make the pot. They had to be connected with everything, with fire, with wind. Everything is involved involved in a pot: the water, the clay, the vine, the firewood, the fire. Every time, as soon as they were going to remove the caripé, they sang. Why? Because in this world, if they sang, they found Mother Nature, and she released the best clay and the best wood bark (the caripé) for them, so when they went, they asked for permission to enter the forest, they entered singing. This song was sung along the way to collect the caripé, because they already wanted to find the fallen caripé (from the tree), right? The loose bark of the tree, because it made it easier. So that’s why they were singing, for the wind to knock down the caripé, for the forest to release the best bark. When it was on the tree, they had to find the right one and cut just one side, remove a piece so as not to mistreat the tree. They had to cut a piece of bark to be able to dry that side, to release the caripé. So, to avoid that, they asked nature to take it down, right? To find already fallen, released by Mother Nature. Then they would find the clay. They sang and beat on the banks of the Igarapé (stream). All this for what? To release the best clay, the clay without sand, good for making a pot, right? So they sang, and singing, then, there they removed the clay. Mother Earth, the Mother of water were going to free up the best clay for them. When they were going to burn the pot, it has to be a beautiful day, right? So this is a pair: the smoke and the wind. Everything has to be connected. The wind has to be combined with the fire because that fire with black smoke doesn’t have to come out, so the pot doesn’t get stained. It’s from the smoke, so everything had to be like that, beautiful, that very beautiful fire, which would burn the pot without leaving that smoke. It is like this.
Cosmology relates to understanding a living, pulsating and richly articulated universe. In the report presented by Suny Kokama, subjectivity, intelligence, sensitivity and will are recognized not only among the women who played a leading role in making the pots, but in other living beings (tree), immaterial (Mother Nature, Mother Water) and elements (water, clay, wind, fire, stream), which are endowed with form, substance and vision about their existence and connection.
Upon hearing Suny’s report, I could quickly see how the narrative would be “decomposed” by the Cartesian canons, aiming to elucidate the rationality (truth) of the phenomena. I converted – or rather -, ‘colonized’ the experience in my mind, seeing how prepared we are to invalidate senses, disallow knowledge and erase cultures. Decomposing the reported experience was the first step. As a researcher of artistic expressions and subjectivity, I fragmented the processes (instead of starting from Kokama cosmology, where “everything is connected in a pot”). I formulated a problem to investigate the relationship between the women’s singing and the fall of lianas (caripé). As a method, it would be important to reproduce the natural conditions of the event as much as possible. I would record the music sung by the same women, control variables (temperature, time of exposure to recorded music, etc.), record the results. If the caripé did in fact let go of the tree, it would proceed to more refined investigations, in order to discover the greatest possible number of cause-effect relationships. And if the caripé did not let go of the tree, a hypothesis which would possibly be the main one in the study, it would resume the explanation of the phenomenon such as wind, plant maturation, humidity, other conditions unrelated to singing. I would also make sure that the caripé will fall at a certain point, regardless of the action of the women’s song. Any of the possibilities mentioned above would invariably lead to confirmation of the superiority of Western knowledge and the classification of Kokama cosmology as “exotic”, “romantic”, “lyrical”, “mythical”. However, climbing on the “shoulders” of this “scientific giant” would not allow me to reach beyond the limits of the paradigm of Western Modernity. Climbing up to the giants of modernity – we ourselves become cogs in the project of Modernity. To see in other directions or other nuances of Suny’s narrative, I need to climb other giants. I dare, then, to step down from these shoulders and climb onto the shoulders of the ancestral “giants” of Suny Kokama.
The pot, an ancestral utensil, present in the Kokama culture since time immemorial, will be manufactured by women who look to themselves, to nature, to the needs of their community (to have new pots). The pot cannot be thought of in isolation. It (he) is part of Kokama culture, nature and is, in itself, an entity. It is necessary to see if the day is suitable for burning wood, if the forest will open for the women to enter, if there will be vine (caripé) already discarded from the trunk, in order to guarantee the continuity of those trees. Not all clay is suitable, so you need to talk to the mother of water, touch it, hit the riverbank, feel the clay, maintain the connection with all these elements through chanting. The result is not the making of a pot. The result is the establishment and continuity of an intense and profound relationship not only with the elements of the forest (tree, habitat of other species, the creek, fire, wind), but also with the people who will use the pots (beautiful, without stains), and who will not be exposed to dark smoke, and who related to each other, with their community, with their ancestors, with the environment, in a perspective that could never be achieved from the hegemonic model of production and organization of life.
Kokama cosmology revealed itself to me as an ethical sense that questioned the boundaries of the dominant ontology in the academic space where I work – a space located in the state with the largest indigenous population in the country. The devices that sustain the coloniality dynamics are in the epistemology, ontology and methods which the academy does not want to give up. However, our inability to dialogue with other cosmologies without hierarchizing, oppressing, denying and excluding the Other, reproduces the colonial project, and will continue to erase subjectivities, reinforce epistemicides and eliminate important knowledge not only for small communities, but for life in a global dimension. For the decolonial turn, I see the urgency in which we, Blacks and Indigenous people in Brazil, need to confront politically and epistemologically the hegemonic discourses and practices, especially in educational institutions.
Reference
Tugny, R. P. & narradores, escritores e ilustradores tikmu’uh da Terra Indígena de Água Boa. (2009). Cantos e Histórias do Gavião-Espírito/Mögöka yög Kutex xi Ägtux. Rio de Janeiro. Beco do Azougue Editorial