With song and seed, Brazil’s Indigenous Maxakali confront climate change

At least three sizable valleys in the Atlantic Forest were once the territory of the Maxakalis. The forest served as a home for the ymxop, which are fundamental to Maxakali beliefs, as well as providing food, medicine, and construction materials for the village’s residents.

Damásio remarked, “There were medicines in the forest for us.” We would use the bark from the trees to relieve our stomachaches. It’s just grass now, though. Everything was burned by the farmers.

Less than 17 percent of the original vegetation is still present in the four remaining Maxakali reservations, which have been reduced to 6, 434 hectares (15, 900 acres) of pasture. Some experts believe that the Atlantic Forest is a regional wilderness.

Many Maxakali leaders are turning to reforestation because they believe in their musical traditions an ecological blueprint from the past.

In Minas Gerais, Brazil, Manuel Damásio Maxakali tends to banana trees [Sara Van Horn/Al Jazeera]

In Maxakali villages, singing organizes life: for example, it helps treat illness, teach history, or instruct people on things like how to make bags and make fishing nets.

The coordinator of the Hmhi project, who is also a musicologist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, said de Tugny, a musician who is also a musicologist, that “songs connect the entire Tikma’n social structure.” “No one writes songs,” said one. They are musical.

She continued, “having a song means being able to care for the spirit that is the song’s creator.”

Ancestral songs also provide a detailed history of local ecology. There are roughly 360 hours of song in total, which includes twelve musical canons that are distinct in terms of grammar and lexicon. The lyrics contain hundreds of flora and fauna that are now extinct in the area.

Manuel Kelé, the village leader of Gua Boa, said, “We sing about everything: the saplings, the bananas, ourselves.” Within our religion, even dogs have a song.

A Maxakali woman uses a hoe to tend to crops — [Sara Van Horn/Al Jazeera] Caretakers at the Hmhi nursery take care of the plants and trees that are growing.

One song, for instance, lists 33 different bee species, some of which are not known in Brazil’s native tongue, Portuguese, and only two of them are still present in the area today. Many Maxakali have never personally witnessed bee behavior, but the lyrics provide it.

De Tugny remarked, “The songs are snapshots.” The names of insects, birds, plants, and instances of animal-to-leaf relationships are like pictures of every detail in the Atlantic Forest. These are all registered.

Ritual songs are essential for the Maxakali to help the forest regenerate. In Hmhi’s tree nurseries, singing is a daily activity.

As part of the regular rhythms of harvesting and cultivation, nursery caretakers also play music while burying seeds. Caretakers sing in concert with one another as they divide into groups and circle the nursery. The lyrics to the song aid in the recall of ancestors’ ecological knowledge.

The project’s leaders believe that reforestation is essential to reducing the region’s fire risks, despite the fact that some of the work at Hmhi is focused on planting fruit trees and other crops.

A woman leans on a wooden gardening implement outdoors in Minas Gerais — [Sara Van Horn/Al Jazeera] Song plays a significant role in the Maxakali culture’s growth cycle.

The Hmhi project has planted 155 hectares (383 acres) of Atlantic Forest vegetation and over 60 hectares (148 acres) of fruit trees since its inception in 2023. A nearly twice as large area as it was previously planted has been in mind.

Participants in the program have also formed their own provisional fire brigade and even constructed natural fire barriers by utilizing traditional techniques, such as planting fire-resistant vegetation species.