July 16, 2021

12:07

Bruno Pacheco – from Cenarium

MANAUS – Samela Sateré-Mawé, 24, is an indigenous and environmental activist and one of the youngest voices of the Sateré-Mawé people, who lives in the West Zone of Manaus. With long straight hair and honey-colored eyes, the young woman who gained prominence during the pandemic by being part of the Fridays for Future movement, led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, says she has already suffered discrimination for having subtle indigenous traits.

“I go through that a lot, especially, on social media. This affected me a lot. As soon as I entered the university, people said things, that I was a fake indigenous person, that I didn’t look like one, all these stereotype things related to indigenous people. When we started to get organized, as a movement of indigenous students, we had several conversations with anthropologists. And the affirmation and self-affirmation every day knocking at our door, we end up learning to defend ourselves and learn that these are stereotypes that people create in relation to indigenous peoples,” said the young woman.

Salema is a Biology student at the Amazonas State University (UEA), she is a member of the Association of Indigenous Women Sateré-Mawe and of the communication team of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (Apib), besides being a artisan, presenter of the Reload Channel and consultant for the Sustainable Amazon Foundation (FAS). This Thursday, the 15th, she was interviewed on the program “CENARIUM INTERVIEW”, with Andrea Vieira, aired by TV CENARIUM and available on Youtube.

Samela told CENARIUM about the origin of the association, the discrimination suffered for being indigenous, the representativeness of the Sateré youth and the fight against projects considered by activists and environmentalists as genocidal. For the young woman, to put the indigenous people in a stereotyped standard, with straight hair, dark eyes and dark skin, is to deny all the violent and colonizing process that the indigenous women suffered since the Portuguese invasion to the Brazilian territory in 1500.

“Each people is different, we can’t generalize the indigenous people as having only one characteristic. We have the Pataxó people who have very curly hair and a darker skin. We have very light skinned Indians in the South of Brazil, like the Kaingang and the Xokleng, and here we also have a diversity. We try, I try, to demystify this on the social networks. It is by breaking the taboo, the paradigms in the social networks, using cell phones, Facebook in the university that we break this”, he emphasized.

‘Born in the moviment’

Samela told CENARIUM that she was born in the middle of the indigenous movements of her people, going to acts and demonstrations, shaking the maraca, an indigenous musical instrument, also known as rattle. These are the memories she has from her childhood and that she seeks to keep, as one of the Sateré-Mawé voices.

“I was born in 1996, after the association became official, after the regulation in 1995: the first act, statute, the first everything of the association. So I was raised in the movement, in meetings, going to acts and manifests. I have these childhood memories, of being in some fair, exhibition, making handicrafts, collecting seeds in the city, sleeping under the table, selling handicrafts, or shaking my maracá in acts and manifestos”, Samela recalled.

According to the young woman, the Association of Sateré-Mawe Indigenous Women emerged after her grandmother and other Sateré-Mawé women arrived in Manaus with the hope of studying and, consequently, a better future to live. With the impact of the ‘big city,’ however, the indigenous women had to go to work in family homes, washing clothes, taking care of children, and other domestic chores. They also suffered abuse and the erasing of their identity by not being able to speak their mother tongue in the capital, because of existing prejudices against indigenous people.

To face discrimination and strengthen the indigenous cause, Samela’s grandmother founded the association, with the support of other women from the ethnic group. Since then, the group, which today has 60 members, has been participating in meetings, acts, and manifests, and its main source of income is handicrafts.

Colonizing Process

According to Samela Sateré-Mawé, the indigenous people suffer daily with the colonizing process, which tries to erase the identity, culture, and language of traditional people. That is why, says the young woman, the indigenous associations and communities exist, to maintain the millenary culture, the language, the rituals, and the customs of the original population, passing them on to the next generations and avoiding historical erasure.

“The colonizing process happens every day and it was no different when they arrived in Manaus. The colonizing process erases our identity, tries to erase our language, culture, and denies our identity as indigenous people, saying that we are no longer indigenous because we are in the city. But, regardless of where we are, we are indigenous and we try to maintain our culture. That is precisely why we are organized in communities and associations,” she highlighted.

Watch the full interview here:

Translated by Bruno Sena