Being indigenous

Being indigenous: the concept of indigeneity, a conversation with two Ayoreo leaders

Mateo: We heard about that word, ‘indigenous’, for the first time in 1964. The white people used this word for the indigenous. It is a white people’s word. Only much later I started to grasp its meaning, but not even today do I know exactly what it means ...

If somebody says [to me] ‘you are indigenous’, [then it] has little meaning to me. If I am asked [directly like that], I say ‘yes’ ... but the person asking does not know what indigenous I am. If he says: ‘you are indigenous’, well, I cannot deny, or say that I am a Paraguayan, or that I am a German, I have to say ‘yes, I am indigenous’ ... because I more or less know what he means [by that term], but in fact, I do have an origin, a name ... it is ‘Ayoreo’.

INSPIRATION FROM INDIGENOUS WORLDS

8th of March, 2010, in the North of the Gran Chaco

Written in 2010. Unluckily, this text has not lost its urgent actuality. With every year going by and with the continuation of the accelerated deforestation in the North of the Paraguayan Chaco, the menaces against the Ayoreo women and men, and the children and youths of the isolated groups, and against their world, have become more and more extreme.