Ay Kakuyri Tama, I live in the city: the indigenous philosophical poetry of Márcia Kambeba in the context of the Brazilian nation-state

Abstract

We approach the philosophical poetics of Marcia Kambeba as an instrument of first-person indigenous insubordination against the formalistic judicial-legal, dichotomous and segregationist narratives in the context of the Brazilian Nation-State. In order to it, we adopt the decolonial analysis of the philosopher’s discuss in the poem Ay kakuyri tama (I live in the city), in dialogue with authors(s) who, like her, understand the body as territory of politics and its transit as a locus of enunciation against oppression. Thus, taking the verses of the poem as the guide text, the essay is divided into three sections: in the first, the author invites the non-indigenous world to her ritual dance, a symbolic invitation that guides the reader to the beginnings of the invasion of Europeans in the lands of the original peoples; in the second, as the poet makes a nostalgic narrative of her childhood times, understands that the struggle and the war are a constant in her existence, analogy that we propose in relation to the process of resistance of the indigenous peoples, forced to be conformed to the state-colonial-modern logic; and, finally, as a conclusion, the poet claims her place in the non-indigenous world, understanding that the tensions inherent to this state are unique and that this transit is part of the very resistance of an identity that coloniality insists on erasing.