Book Talk • Ancestral Future (Ailton Krenak) • With Co-Translator Jamille Pinheiro Dias

Events

Book Talk • Ancestral Future (Ailton Krenak) • With Co-Translator Jamille Pinheiro Dias

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

4:00-5:30 p.m.

Joukowsky Forum (155), 111 Thayer St.

Reception to follow

About the Event
This book talk will feature Natalia Brizuela (University of California, Berkeley) in conversation with Jamille Pinheiro Dias (Brown University and University of London) and Laura Pensa (Brown University). They will be discussing Ailton Krenak’s newly released book “Ancestral Future” (Polity, 2024), recently co-translated by Jamille Pinheiro Dias. The conversation will be held in English, but participants are welcome to intervene in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. The books are also available in Spanish through Eterna Cadencia Press and in Portuguese through Companhia das Letras.

About the Speakers
Natalia Brizuela is professor of Spanish & Portuguese and Film & Media, and is the Class of 1930 Chair of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jamille Pinheiro Dias is CLACS Craig M. Cogut Visiting Professor at Brown University. She is also Director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of London.

Laura Pensa is Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Hispanic Studies at Brown University.

About the Book
In response to the escalating ecological, political, and social crises of our time, Indigenous leader and activist Ailton Krenak counters the lasting and destructive impacts of colonialism and capitalism. Krenak challenges the fixation on a supposed future of endless progress and growth, arguing that this overemphasis on what is yet to unfold is a harmful illusion that diverts our attention from the here and now. In Ancestral Future, Krenak points out how we often lose ourselves in either a nostalgic past or an imagined future, failing to confront the world as it is. He advocates for an alternative: an ancestral future, already embodied in the land and its living systems, challenging environmental perceptions that reduce rivers, mountains, trees, and other non-human entities—which he describes as our relatives—to mere resources for exploitation. Krenak’s work offers important insights for those concerned with the climate crisis and environmental degradation. Born in Brazil’s Doce River Valley, Krenak is a key figure in environmental advocacy and the fight for Indigenous rights.