Edson Krenak is an Indigenous activist, scholar, and writer of the Krenak people in Brazil. He serves as the Brazil/Amazon program manager at the U.S.-based Indigenous rights non-profit, Cultural Survival. Krenak sat down with Editor-in-Chief Peter Schmidt to discuss his work.
PCS: Edson, how did you begin your advocacy work?
EK: In 2015, the Fundão mining dam in Minas Gerais collapsed and released tons and tons of kilos of toxic mud into the Rio Doce valley, which is the sacred homeland of my people, the Krenak. The mud destroyed ecosystems across nearly 700 kilometers of river all the way to the Atlantic Ocean – a river that not only represents our oldest ancestor, but is also the sacred site of our prayers, ceremonies, dances, and sacred chants. It took away one of the most sacred practices of the Krenak people: the practice of paying attention to the river.
That moment changed my life. In Brazil, we feel so weak in the face of international corporations. I thought, “Maybe if I go to study abroad, it will help me gain more powerful allies to protect our homelands.”
I’m now studying for a PhD in legal anthropology at the University of Vienna and working at an international organization called Cultural Survival. We work with Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities confronting mining, infrastructure, and other corporate projects, particularly where rights, territory, or consent are at risk.
For Indigenous communities, attention is necessarily a collective experience.
PCS: Tell me more about the kinds of relationships you’re protecting.
EK: Right now, I’m working with the Xavante people from the Cerrado biome in Brazil. For the A’uwẽ Xavante people, the land is called Ró. They say, “Ró is kin.” This encapsulates a belief that many Indigenous Peoples have in common. Our work is to defend this kin: our ancestors, animals, other beings, flowers, plants, and other worlds. We’re taught to pay attention to these things because for us, life is a sustained relationship with the land and with the past that it carries.
People sometimes describe this relationship using the word prayer, right? But, prayer is not really precise; it’s just a common religious word to describe what is, more accurately, a conversation. One that requires respect. Because you are talking not only to one person, but to many. You’re not talking only with your world, but with other worlds, too.
PCS: What role does attention play in those conversations?
EK: I’ll give you an example. One of the most common practices across Indigenous cultures is the tradition of body painting, which is a way of holding sacred conversations about the body.
Body painting is a beautiful ritual of collective attention. And for Indigenous peoples, attention is never an individual endeavor. This is why I connect to the movement of Attention Activism and the work of the Friends of Attention: It’s so sad to see these new technologies isolate people by capturing and fracturing their attention. For Indigenous communities, attention is necessarily a collective experience.
Ancestry is important for Indigenous people because it’s an opportunity to merge memory (of the past) and attention (to the present). In his book The Falling Sky, shaman Davi Kopenawa describes the commodity society as being “organized through forgetfulness.”
PCS: Do the Krenak people have a word for attention?
EK: That’s a good question. I don’t know a single Krenak word that translates precisely to the English “attention.” But our language is already so inherently relational. Consider, for example, the word amankut. Amankut is a word for food – specifically, food given by a relative. When you receive amankut, you are led to remember that the food was given by a relative. Compare this to the experience of going to a supermarket, where you see food as a commodity that has no connection to anyone whatsoever. You just buy it and bring it home. There’s no invitation to pay attention to the history of that food.
In Western cultures, language tends toward abstraction. It points away from our real-world experiences; the body becomes something peripheral. But most Indigenous languages exhibit an opposite movement. They try to connect everything: What you’re saying connects to who gave you this, who produced that, where you found it, and how it touches your life. There is a much closer relationship between attention and memory.
PCS: Say more.
EK: For example, when you talk about encantos, the spirits of nature, you are talking about the past as part of the present. Ancestry is important for Indigenous people because it’s an opportunity to merge memory (of the past) and attention (to the present). In his book The Falling Sky, shaman Davi Kopenawa describes the commodity society as being “organized through forgetfulness.”
Commodities are objects whose history is meant to be forgotten. That is, for me, one of the most evil aspects of these new technologies. People don’t ask where this technology comes from! There was a recent study asking Japanese youth to name three minerals inside their devices. They didn’t know. They couldn’t name three metals. Imagine, then, if you ask the much deeper question: “How much extraction do you need to produce one smartphone?” People have no clue.
As it turns out, there are more than 50 different metals in one smartphone, and you need to extract almost 300 kilos to produce one single smartphone. It’s staggering! This has everything to do with the fracturing of our attention. We don’t know where our technology comes from. What was done to the land to make this attractive device in our hands, this device that is stealing our attention?
When you give your full human attention, you are remembering who you are and who helped to make you.
PCS: You’re drawing a connection between the environmental harms and the psychic/cultural harms of these technologies – something we’ve written about in relation to AI data centers – by emphasizing the kinds of attention we give to our technologies’ material history.
EK: That’s right. When you ask many Indigenous Peoples about their most precious belongings, many of them will say that it is their name. Ask them why and they’ll say, “My name was given to me by my family through a long process of rituals and conversations. They met to choose it months before I was born. When I reached adulthood, I gained a new name.” The point is, each name directs our attention to a particular phase of our lives, and to the loving attention of the people who named us.
Another commonly treasured possession is the cocar, a feathered headdress, which materializes the attention of the person who made it. To make a cocar, you have to go to the forest and collect the feathers. This requires knowing the flight paths of birds, knowing where they eat, knowing where they fight, where they breed, and what time of year they surrender their feathers. Then you have to decide what kinds of feathers to incorporate and why, what kind of story you want to tell, what kinds of wisdom, what intention you have for its recipient. When you give the cocar to its intended owner, you tell them the story of how you made it, and all the kinds of attention that produced the object in their hands.
These histories of attention are what make objects precious. Modern technologies take this from us twice: by trapping and monetizing our attention, and by concealing the kinds of attention that made the devices themselves. This creates a huge abyss between the device and the history of human experience that made it possible.
PCS: If you asked people in New York City what their most treasured object would be, I imagine many would say it’s their smartphone.
EK: Plenty of friends of mine feel that they are addicted to their phones. But there are spaces where it is more possible to live apart from these things. Attention is territorial, and our ancestral territories, our forest spaces, rivers and hills – these are sanctuaries of attention for us. They have been harmed by extractivism, but they are still places where we can attend to the relations that make life possible.
PCS: What does the movement of Indigenous cultural advocacy have to teach Attention Activists about our shared mission?
EK: I think there are two important lessons. The first is that we need to reconnect our understanding of attention with memory. When you give your full human attention, you are remembering who you are and who helped to make you. The attention you discuss in your attention liberation movement speaks directly to what I call “shamanic methodology,” the process by which attention becomes memory, relation, and responsibility. That kind of attention helps us remember that there are other worlds around us and other beings around us, that we are not alone here. Forgetting this makes us sick.
The second has to do with justice. This for-profit system is killing our ecosystems, polluting our water, spoiling our land, and destroying our ability to give attention to the land – the form of attention that makes life possible. This business is bad for life! It is a terrible injustice.
In my writing on the wisdom of other Indigenous traditions, I’ve proposed the three R’s: relationality, reciprocity, respect. You can understand these as three kinds of attention that are absolutely essential to life on this planet. That’s what our shared movement is working to protect.