Translator’s note: Naiá is an indigenous woman who fell in
love with the moon. The pirabutão is a common name for
the flat-whiskered catfish, or Pinirampus pirinampu, found in
the Amazon, Essequibo, Orinoco, and Paraná basins. Though
translators usually convert gendered pronouns in Romance
languages into gender-neutral pronouns, I decided to retain
them to reflect that Kambeba is describing an indigenous
cosmology in which elements such as water and the moon
are personified.Márcia Kambeba, of the Omágua/
Kambeba indigenous people in Brazil,
is the author of Ay kakyri Tama – Eu
moro na cidade (2013). She’s a writer,
composer, poet, activist, photographer,
performer, and public speaker on indigenous and Amazonian
subjects. With a master’s degree in geography, she offers
workshops and storytelling throughout Brazil and abroad.Tiffany Higgins is a poet, translator, and
writer on the environment and Brazil.
Her writing appears in Granta, Guernica,
Poetry, and elsewhere.Visit worldlit.org to read more by Kambeba and
Higgins on poetics, politics, and indigenous rights
and to listen to a recording of this poem in Portuguese/Tupi.The Poetry of Climate Change
in the Global South
by Tiffany HigginsI
N BRAZIL, INDIGENOUS WRITERS tend not to fore-
ground the concept of global climate, or even the environment,
as a separate category. Instead, they write about nature and
culture as woven together, describing their spiritual vision of earth
and ancestry (antithetical to nonindigenous extractivism) as well
as indigenous rights—the protection of which is essential to the
protection of their forest homelands. Brazilian indigenous writings
don’t fit neatly into US/European formulations of climate and envi-
ronment. I believe for this reason that they’re essential for broaden-
ing conceptions of possible solutions, which would include acting
as allies for peoples on the most vulnerable edges of extraction and
integrating urgent issues of cultural survival into any climate discus-
sion. In a utilitarian perspective, Brazilian forests produce “environ-
mental services” for the globe in the form of carbon sequestration.
Brazilian indigenous peoples are guardians of the forest as they
protect their preserves at a rate exponentially higher than neighbor-
ing areas that are logged, mined, and burned for agribusiness—so
they’re vital to climate regulation. If we value their climate contribu-
tions, we should support their political struggles for cultural and ter-
ritorial continuance (for starters, such indigenous-led organizations
as coiab, apib, and coica).
In the poem featured here, Márcia Wayna Kambeba makes use
of the fact that in Portuguese, tempo can mean both “time” and
“weather” and that clima means both “weather” and “climate.” She
uses these flexible meanings to convey how actions in her Amazo-
nian home that affect local weather, obstructing ancient cultural
practices, are connected to the wider climate. The poem also implies
that the problem of climate will only be solved by a return to ancient
knowledge, a way of relating to an earth animated by enchanted
spirits, and a set of cultural practices that indigenous elders possess.
Kambeba writes mostly in Portuguese, but she embeds Tupi
words purposefully and consciously. She is aware that her nonindig-
enous readers would not understand many of these Tupi words, but
her choice seems to be to challenge readers to come to face indige-
nous culture via indigenous languages. I asked Kambeba about why
she uses Tupi rather than her own language. She explained that the
Kambeba language is in the Tupi-Guarani linguistic family. Rather
than use Kambeba terms, which only indigenous people of her small
ethnic group would know, she chooses to use Tupi words so that
tens of thousands of indigenous peoples will be able to understand
her and feel united in a common identity through the poetic per-
formances she gives.
The United Nations has designated 2019 as the International
KAMBEBA BIO PHOTO © AGÊNCIA PARA' TOP PHOTO: MÁRCIA KAMBEBA Year of Indigenous Languages.
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