Yanuni, the movie: “We have the right to tell the world we exist”

Yanuni premiered in the village of Kaarimã, Xipaya Indigenous Territory, Terra do Meio, the Amazon. It was the first gathering of female members of the Xipaya, a people who were thought to be extinct—but there they were, on the banks of the Iriri River. Made by Austrian director Richard Ladkani and coproduced by actor Leonardo Di Caprio, the film portrays the most recent years in the fight of one of these women, Juma Xipaia.

Juma opens the movie alone, an Indigenous woman making her way between the Forest and a world that is destroying the Forest, raising her children and forging ties with other women as she carries on the fight, despite violence and death threats.

Enter Hugo Loss, a ranger with the environmental watchdog agency Ibama, who becomes part of Juma’s story. From then on, the narrative goes behind the scenes of this battle to halt Forest destruction. Rounding another curve in the river, Juma is appointed secretary within Brazil’s ministry of Indigenous peoples, a landmark achievement. The camera follows Juma and Hugo to Brasilia, the modernist capital that paved over a piece of the Cerrado, Brazil’s biodiverse savannah biome.

Instead of one warrior, now there are two, like a Hollywood classic but in this case with real blood. Yanuni then becomes more than a movie—it becomes the life that is born along with the story.

After its screening in the Xipaya Indigenous Territory, the film crossed the equator to hold its world premiere on June 14 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Next it heads to Britain for more showings. No date has been set for its release in Brazil.

I am Juma Xipaia’s cousin. We’re members of the Xipaya people and grew up in the same village, immersed in the waters, stories, and trails of the Xipaya Indigenous Territory. Our grandmother was our people’s midwife, the woman who through her struggle proved we exist and demarcated our territory-body.

Today, Juma and I live in different villages in our territory, but we remain connected by our land and the struggle that runs through us. This interview is unique because it is the first time someone from her own people has interviewed Juma Xipaia for a press outlet.

WAJÃ XIPAI: When you saw the film for the first time, how did you feel? What was the process of making the movie like?

JUMA XIPAIA: What first struck me was this: the film doesn’t show even one percent of my life. It doesn’t sum up my story, nor does it encapsulate the Indigenous movement or Hugo’s [Loss] role. The film offers a snapshot of a few moments in our lives. And our struggle greatly predates political party issues, between the [Jair] Bolsonaro and Lula administrations. So it  was really distressing for me because [I felt like] we had to put more information into the film. Except it’s a movie, and even if it were 24 hours long, that wouldn’t be enough time to tell our whole story or the whole story of our resistance. So I got my stress under control and then could feel a certain happiness: We’ve made it here; we’ve broken through this barrier within the media, within cinema.

Yanuni, like other Indigenous films, has broken through cinema’s closed, exclusionary barrier. We’re going to be on movie screens around the world and that’s a really big thing. We’re holding this megaphone in our hands today, showing the world what it’s really like in the Amazon and Brazil, the reality of Indigenous peoples, and also all the work being done by non-Indigenous people, like agents of [the federal environmental agency] Ibama and other people who have other ways of fighting to defend the territory or who even hold public office, like now, in the ministry of Indigenous peoples. So I felt quite happy about that—this is real; the movie is out there.

Now we have the chance to use this mega communication tool. That’s really wonderful, something I’d never imagined in my life. It’s not about Juma or about Hugo—I was just lucky enough to be there as the main character in the film, but it represents the story of many women, many young people. That’s why I hope people will identify with it and understand Yanuni isn’t something out of the past but right in the present.

How did you meet director Richard Ladkani and begin working on the film?

I met Richard in early 2020. I agreed to take part in the project but said I didn’t want the film to be all about myself. I wanted it to give something back to our territory, be a tool that could strengthen our struggle as an Indigenous people, that could strengthen our movement and portray our harsh reality. Because we are capable of fighting hard and risking our very lives for something bigger, not just to protect our territory but to demarcate it. It’s not just our resistance but of all the elements so vitally important to the balance of the planet. I remember saying to Richard: “I don’t want fame; I don’t want lots of followers. What I want is a different reality. I want to be able to stay in my territory; I want my children to enjoy the same childhood as I did, swimming in the River, walking through the Forest, eating food free from pesticides. I want coming generations to have the right to live and do so in dignity—and not just resist in their territory.”

What was the hardest part for you, the part that showed some of your vulnerability?

[The images] of my children were really hard for me. That part worried me. I’m still quite concerned about it, because the threats haven’t been aimed only at me; they go farther. So the part that touches my children is the part that hit me hardest. I didn’t even want them to be included, but then I thought about how people really need to see the emotional side, the side where I’ve felt vulnerable. [Same with the moments when] I was really hit by the energy I could feel from people close to me, who were in a bad way or had attempted suicide, while I was on the other side of the world, with these people trying to contact me. I asked myself what else we needed to do so these young people could have the prospect of a future and would want to go on living instead of wanting to give up. Because I want to give up every day—and every day I feel tired. Every day I’d like to be back in my village, with my family, my aunts, in my territory. I really suffer being here [in Brasilia] today. This is the worst part of what I have to deal with every day, the fight with this Juma, my inner jaguar who wants to run into the Forest, who wants to stay there, and this other Juma, my activist part, who believes in changing the future and in this fight and in a better future, and so has to be here.

So it’s a really big internal struggle, with these Jumas who exist inside me in different ways and who say: “Just a little more time, just a little more, and soon I’ll go back to my territory, soon I’ll be where I really want to be, where my spirit draws its strength, where I’m truly happy.” But for now, I need to be here.

After all this, with the film’s release, do you think people will finally listen to you?

I didn’t take part in the film simply because I wanted to be heard or become some kind of figure, in the sense of individualism, as if I were the sole representative of the Amazon. I hope people will recognize the potential of our strength, our beauty, and hear not only the voice of Juma or Indigenous peoples but the voice of the Forest. The main voice to hear isn’t mine; I’m just a messenger. What I really hope is that people’s souls will be touched, because spiritual connection is about a connection within the heart. I hope they don’t just listen, don’t just see with their eyes, but see with their spirit, so they can understand it isn’t a matter of an individual struggle or a struggle only for Indigenous peoples but rather a collective struggle. And that we need support; we need mobilization.

I hope the film moves people, because this isn’t just Juma’s reality; this isn’t just the reality in the Amazon. The Forest interacts with other biomes, even beyond Brazil, and this has everything to do with our world’s balance. We should learn from this connection with the Forest and adopt these dynamics. I hope people are really touched and that they react, that they act where they each are, because that’s where they can make a difference. And making this difference means not consuming gold that carries the blood of the Munduruku, the [Mbengôkre] Kayapó, the Yanomami, the blood that carries the lives of many women and children, many of whom are denied life while still in their mother’s belly or who live with the lasting effects of mercury [which is used by gold miners and contaminates the waters of the Amazon]. I hope people understand that even though they aren’t in the Amazon, they’re still consuming products that come from there, products that carry the blood of innocent people, of innocent children. The gold taken from the Amazon and then “legalized” and shipped mainly to Europe carries within it all this history of violence, all this history of victims left behind in Brazil. So when you wear this kind of jewelry to show off, you’re showing off a crime; you’re showing off the genocide of many peoples; you’re showing off a rollback not just in rights that have been won but also taking away the rights of future generations. This impact isn’t limited to the Amazon or Brazil; it runs through underground rivers and flying rivers [formed by the transpiration of trees to create rainfall in South America].

One of the interesting things you said in the movie was: “We are the climate; we are the Forest.” What do these words mean to you today?

Everything. These words sum me up as a person. I am who I am today only because my childhood was spent with my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and my parents, who all taught me about the universe of the Forest, passing on the knowledge I hold within me today, from building a house to making a clay pot. They taught me to understand we are the Forest. When you read in the paper that someone killed their own mother or father, it’s really shocking. And when you look at the Forest, it’s as if we were raping or murdering our mother. We get all our knowledge about medicine from her. These words really sum me up because it’s what they taught me: if you take care of the Forest, she’ll take care of you. I learned a very powerful lesson from my grandmother and grandfather: before you step into a River, you have to ask permission; before you step into the Forest, you have to do so too. Because everything has a father and mother, and they’ll punish you if you don’t respect them. The standing Forest is our greatest source of ancient, ancestral knowledge. Our ancestors didn’t leave us gold bars in a bank; they didn’t leave millions of dollars in a bank. The greatest heritage our ancestors left us is the Forest, filled with an entire universe of knowledge and science, handed down by our ancestors.

The film depicts your desire to be back in your territory. What’s it like, being so far away because of the struggle?

It’s unbelievable because I never imagined this. I lived my childhood and part of my adolescence very fully and joyfully, in the territory, and I thought the Forest was infinite. I imagined growing up, getting married, and raising my children there. I never imagined being where I am today, and I never wanted it either. I ask myself this every day: Why? I’m very leery of visibility. I don’t post about much of what I do; I don’t usually post photos. I don’t go around announcing where I am or what I’m doing or thinking. I just do it. So it can be difficult for some people to see what an important role I play today, not only for our territory but for this great Indigenous peoples’ movement in Brazil. Today, dealing with this pain means realizing I’m not there in our territory, in the Middle Xingu, but my spirit is. My spirit never left there, my love never left there, and everything I do here on the outside is with our well-being as a territory and our existence as peoples in mind.

When I was around 6 or 7, my mother was pregnant and we arrived at a port of [the Indigenous affairs agency] Funai, because we were going to the Casa do Índio [an Indigenous healthcare post, in Altamira]. The Funai agent said we couldn’t stay at the Casa do Índio because we, Xipaya, weren’t Indigenous, and we didn’t even exist. My mother was pregnant, had no resources, was looking for health care, and had five children, counting the one in her belly. I remember us sitting down on top of our things and staying there for hours, wondering where we were going to go. That image has never left my head, nor has that voice.

Today our territory has been demarcated; it’s officially recognized. We have not only won rights; we also have the right to tell the world we exist. That’s what empowers me, because being here isn’t just about me; it’s about us. That’s what our youth need to understand and value. I gave up a lot for the sake of our territory, our story, our existence as Xipaya. Everything I do in life is focused on our territory. I’m sure I’ll be back there with my children in the near future because that’s what I want most in life. Being here, on the outside, is simply a way for us to gain more strength, to make our voice resonate and strengthen our territory.

I don’t want anyone else to go through what we’ve gone through, what our grandparents and parents suffered and went through so we could enjoy the legacy of proudly carrying our Xipaya name on our documents and in our struggle. Every day, I hear his voice [the Funai agent saying the Xipaya don’t exist]. I don’t want my children to hear it; I don’t want you to either.

The film is also about your relationships as a mother and as a woman, and in the end, you seem to assign this responsibility to your children as well. How personal is this struggle and how collective is it?

We are everything all at once. When we fight as a mother or an aunt, as a sister or woman, there’s no way we aren’t also fighting for the territory, the Forest, our knowledge, for this whole legacy that has been handed down to us. It’s not a struggle for the individual because, if it were, I’d be like many other people who only care about their own home, their own clothes and backyard, their salary, and I would put my children’s and my well-being in first place and let everybody else do the fighting. I’d be [like many] waiting for someone else to defend the territory, for someone else to fight for education and health care, while I’d be there looking after my own home and children. I’d really love to be able to do that right now, but this is my mission, and what I can do is try to reconcile all of this and remain firm in the struggle. But, yes, it’s tiring, it’s stressful, it’s dangerous. I would love it if we could go on with our lives without worrying about logging, mining, and contaminated water and fish. But that’s not our reality—although it’s the future I hope for. I always ask myself what seed I’m leaving behind, and I hope I’ll be able to look back and see a whole Forest.

The film shows a bit of your time at the ministry of Indigenous peoples, a bit of your work there, but ultimately we see you leave the post. I’d like to understand better why you thought it was important to join the ministry and why you left.

Look, at first, I didn’t want to accept [the invitation to be secretary of the ministry’s department of Organization and Promotion of Indigenous Rights]. Like the film and many other things in my life today, the ministry wasn’t in my plans. At the time, I was living in our territory and had my future all planned out. We had planned the pregnancy; Hugo and I had our family all planned out for the next four or five years. I’d done some planning with [the village of] Karimã, with the [Juma] Institute. So I was back in my village, and my mother turned on the television. Minister Sonia [Guajajara] was speaking, and there was an image of him [Lula] walking up the ramp with Raoni. It was a really moving moment, and it gave me a sense of pride, an urge to shout out because we had broken through a big barrier, something unimaginable for many.

I felt like I was there too because those people were representing me—not because I wanted to be there. When the invitation came, I was obviously quite surprised and my first response was, “No, I can’t.” I asked myself, “Will I have the same autonomy to do things, or will we be silenced? Will I really be able to work directly with our territory, engaging in action, or will I be trapped inside the government and feel like we’re handcuffed?”

Speaking to Sonia on the phone, as a leader and a woman—a warrior who is such a symbol of strength—I told her I didn’t feel ready, and it wasn’t part of my plans. She said the ministry was all new to her as well, that it was the product of a struggle, that nothing had been given to us, but it had all been won. She said she would need strong people, who were also committed to the movement, the struggle, the cause, so she could keep the ministry going beyond this administration’s four years. She said she didn’t know how to be a minister either but was willing to learn for the greater good of Indigenous peoples.

In this conversation with Sonia the leader—going the way a woman-to-woman talk does—I ended up changing my mind and saying yes. At that moment, I felt if I didn’t say yes, I’d feel like a coward, running from the fight, and I don’t do that. What convinced me to join the ministry wasn’t the office itself or the status of being a secretary, or the salary, or the idea of having a future political career, but because I listened to the voice of someone who to me represents so much and is our great symbol of resistance.

Was it hard?

It was really hard to enter a completely unknown universe. When we got to the ministry, we brought a whole base of activism and resistance with us, of fighting to be able to exist. And I was in the ministry as part of the government. I wasn’t there to talk about public policy demands; I was there as a policymaker. So it was quite different from the road I’d been paving. It was really hard for me to tell myself, “Now I’m the government; now we’re the government.”

I was always very clear about saying: “I’m in the government, we’re in the government, but I am Juma, I am Xipaya.” This really helped relieve a lot of the burden of being in government, because in the previous four years, the government [of Jair Bolsonaro] had been highly anti-Indigenous, genocidal, and everything was still very fresh, very heavy.

I was the first to arrive. There was no chief of staff; there was nobody. I didn’t have a team for a few months—and not just me. That was our reality. Today we have a ministry, but a ministry inside a government whose structure is Bolsonarist and anti-Indigenous. It’s still a structure that doesn’t want us in the government, and of course, as an Indigenous woman and secretary, I felt we weren’t welcome. We still have a long way to go if we’re going to occupy this space beyond four years. We need to demarcate, occupy, and remain in the government in the capital of Brazil, in Brasilia. It’s not something transitory.

The whole time I was there, it was with this commitment. But I confess it was a daily struggle, receiving demands from all over Brazil, involving everything from health care and education to obstetric violence and even human trafficking. In my department, we had to deal with all this and many other things. So you say to yourself, “My God, where do we start? Which fire first? When will we quit putting out fires and start taking action?”

We were inundated by countless demands because we’ve been going backwards for more than 525 years. At first, I felt a lot of distress and inner struggle because I was in government and didn’t want to admit it. Things started getting a little easier the second year, because by then we had a team structure in place and we’d already started our work, yet I still felt a lot of angst because I think I couldn’t detach myself from my activism. Every day I suffered from the feeling I should be doing more, and I don’t think I was the only one who felt that.

I believe the ministry represents great power, and it’s very necessary, very important, for us Indigenous peoples, something we need to strengthen because looking at a government from the outside is quite different from being inside it. One thing we Indigenous people in government cannot forget are our origins, our roots, and why we are there. Above all, that we don’t owe any political party or anybody any favors, because nothing was handed to us—everything was earned.

There came a moment when I asked myself if we were really Indigenizing the state or simply being indoctrinated. However, I do think we have to occupy this office, because it’s a tremendous achievement, a great tool for changing public policy for ourselves. My time in the ministry was wonderful. It taught me a lot, it prepared me, but I’m not interested in a political career. My decision to drop out was of course very painful, but I believe there comes a time when everything has a beginning, middle, and end, and I couldn’t be there anymore. What both the ministry and the minister need are people who help strengthen the base, and I decided to strengthen them from the outside, in our territory, on another front.

When we watch the film, we realize it has a certain aesthetic; it’s aimed at outsiders, at the outside world. How did this choice come about, and why the option for this aesthetic, this way of telling the story?

I’ve asked myself that a lot. We really changed the initial proposal, which was the idea of a typical documentary. We wanted to use a slightly different approach while highlighting the moments when the team was accompanying me. If it had been done the way I wanted, I definitely think we wouldn’t be at Tribeca and some other festivals; we wouldn’t be in certain places. Not everybody wants to talk about the mercury issue, the oil issue, the mining issue. So how did we manage to break through this barrier and speak not only to ourselves and the movement, not only to those being affected, but mainly to those who are consuming these products? How could we speak in a way they’d be able to understand? How could we break through from the inside out?

I talked a lot about this with Richard, but I’m learning a great deal about how to adapt so you can get into these spaces and try to make changes. It wasn’t easy to go along with this aesthetic, but I accept it today. Of course, in the near future, coming films and documentaries won’t necessarily have to embrace this same aesthetic; they could conform to our own. But for that to happen, we first had to break through this barrier and win over these spaces. And, unfortunately, we still have to adapt to many other things to be there. That doesn’t mean the film was made only for outsiders, but it is meant to show what we’ve been saying for many years, apparently talking only to ourselves—in hopes that now everybody will listen.

You’ve kind of already talked about this, but at first it seems like the movie is telling the story of two people fighting for the Amazon—in keeping somewhat with a Hollywood aesthetic—the story of two people who have their conflicts, who want to be together but have their struggles. How do you see it?

That was our reality. When the film begins, I’m there alone. When Hugo comes into my life, it fills in something that had been missing, of having a partner. This wasn’t in the script when we started filming. But from then on, we didn’t follow the script; the film followed my life. Richard just went along behind me the whole time with his camera, his lens, documenting what was really there.

I hadn’t thought about including my relationship with Hugo in the film, or the birth of my children. So what looks like something out of Hollywood is in fact real, because we don’t just live the resistance—we also love, we also need care, a partner, we also have a family. I’m a leader, but I’m a mother and wife too. It was our reality that unfolded before the lens. We were fortunate that Hugo came along—like a gift from the universe—to show this other work being done to protect the Amazon, work done with a lot of love. Hugo isn’t Indigenous, but he’s part of the people who protect the Forest with their very lives. So it’s not a romance, but the film was given this story that seems made up, planned, that seems like fiction—but it’s all reality.

The places you go always have a majority of men. And your female body is often violated by men’s words. One of the most powerful scenes depicting this violence takes place at Amazon Center of the World [a movement that brought together Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders, thinkers, and scientists from across Brazil and the world to Altamira in 2019, where they met with strong resistance from landgrabbers and representatives of predatory agribusiness]. What is this like for you?

Unfortunately, this isn’t only my reality but that of many women. Even more so when we play a leadership role. Getting out of bed every day is like picking up a shield and saying, “Let’s fight.” Because male chauvinism is very widespread, not just physical violence but psychological too. Even though we have a woman minister, a woman president of Funai today. We’re mothers, we’re Indigenous, we’re leaders. We’re this mega-package we lug around every day, like a big, overflowing basket. We get out of bed, pick up this big basket, and on top of it have to deal with all this violence.

The violence isn’t limited to women leaders or Indigenous women but affects each and every woman. And when you’re a mother, you suffer another kind of violence. As if we weren’t capable, as if we couldn’t do it, as if having children means you have some kind of impediment. We have to keep proving all the time that we can do it, that we’ll be able to handle it, and that we are just as capable as any man or any other woman who doesn’t have children and isn’t married. We are still in a space of gender and political violence. Femicide rates are only rising. It’s no different for me. That’s why I really believe in the film as a tool, a megaphone that will empower other women.

If you could sum up Yanuni’s message in one sentence, what would it be?

Yanuni is transformation—and continuity.