Keeping Memories Alive
Transcript
But the goal has always been for us to have a communicator within the territory to make records, both of the rituals and to accompany the protection groups within our territory, which are made up of women—there is a group of women, firefighters, and guardians.
So my work has the purpose of documenting both the work of territorial protection and the rituals. As I said before, we didn’t have the means to make these records.
And we have always had many leaders who fought for the demarcation of our territory, and we were not able to see what those leaders were like. So the work of photography is also about keeping memory alive through images. This is connected even to our customs and rituals. So the goal is to make sure that we preserve this memory through images.
Within the territory, communication is part of protection. The goal has always been to have an Indigenous communicator documenting daily life: recording rituals and accompanying territorial protection groups formed by women, firefighters, and guardians.
Genilson Guajajara’s work centers on documenting both the defense of the land and the spiritual and cultural practices that sustain his people. For many years, there were no tools to record these histories. Leaders who fought for the demarcation of the territory were not visually remembered, leaving gaps in collective memory.
Through photography and visual documentation, he works to keep these memories alive, preserving the images of leadership, resistance, rituals, and community life. In doing so, communication becomes an act of cultural continuity, ensuring that future generations can see, remember, and remain connected to their history.
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