Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World

In this uneven polemic, Brazilian journalist Brum (The Collector of Leftover Souls) makes an impassioned plea to save the Amazon rainforest and its peoples. “The only effective way to reforest the Amazon,” she contends, “is to reforest the forestpeoples,” meditating on the need to center Indigenous people in efforts to repair the rainforest. Anthropological research, she reports, suggests that precolonial Indigenous communities planted and tended swaths of the Amazon, making their descendants valuable sources of knowledge for how to restore it. Highlighting the activism of Indigenous individuals, she tells how Munduruku leader Maria Leusa breastfeeds while speaking out against invasive mining at public events because she sees both activities as driven by her commitment to a better future. Brum is a spirited advocate for her subjects, but frequent abstract digressions prove more suggestive than edifying (she dedicates a chapter to musings on using the word virgin to describe the rainforest, but never arrives at a thesis). Abstruse prose further muddies her points (“I have laid my body down in this river’s language, rubbed my skin on its skin... and I know the Xingu [River] is a woman”). The elliptical delivery drags down an otherwise stirring account of the Indigenous fight for justice in the Amazon. (Mar.)