Confirmed presence at the event, the indigenous leader and the artist will address the importance of science, technology and innovation for a sustainable future

How can we ensure convergence between scientific, technological and natural resources? Questions like these, which have inspired Ailton Krenak's lectures in recent years, will permeate his participation in the 13th edition of the RNP Forum - which will take place from August 27 to 29, in Brasília. Alongside him will be the actress, illustrator, film and theater director Rita Carelli, who has been active in the cause of native peoples since she was a child, when she visited indigenous villages with her father, Vincent Carelli, a French documentary filmmaker and indigenist.

“It’s always great to talk to Ailton. We have a long-standing partnership. His thinking is a place where I also recognize myself because I was raised in indigenous villages and met him when I was still a child”, says Carelli about her partnership with Krenak, which has already resulted in books such as Ideias para Adiar o Fim do Mundo (Ideas to Postpone the End of the World) (2019) and Futuro Ancestral (Ancestral Future) (2022).

Inaugurated last year as an immortal of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL), Krenak will lead the debate on sustainability, one of the pillars of the event, amid growing technological innovations and the wave of scientific denialism in the post-pandemic period. 

“Instead of following a path in which we can combine science and technology, today we are experiencing a sabotage of science and an over-appreciation of technological resources, to the point where we spend billions to send probes to Mars and deny the same volume of resources for the distribution and expansion of the science production base here on Earth”, said Krenak at an academic meeting promoted by the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in 2020.

The leader and activist participated in the Assembly that resulted in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988. His speech at the National Congress left its mark on Brazilian political history, when he showed his face painted with black jenipapo paint on national television - which signifies mourning in indigenous culture. “Recognizing indigenous peoples’ ways of expressing their culture and tradition is a fundamental condition for indigenous people to establish harmonious relations with national society, so that there is truly a perspective for the future, for life, and not for a permanent and incessant threat”, he said at the time.

Krenak has been gaining more and more space in the media, expanding his speeches and writings from the defense of indigenous peoples to a broader fight for environmental preservation and combating social inequalities. The choice of his name to occupy the fourth seat of the ABL materializes his recognition as an important voice in discussions involving the sustainable development of the country.

“We have become alienated from this organism of which we are a part, the Earth, and we have come to think that it is one thing and we are another: the Earth and humanity. I do not understand where there is anything that is not nature”, he wrote in his second book, Ideias para Adiar o Fim do Mundo (Ideas to Postpone the End of the World) (2019).

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