It is difficult to bring a critical eye to such a respected figure in the world of artistic, political and environmental activism. People are complex and therefore so are their artistic productions. I believe that Sebastião Salgado's work exists somewhere between the beneficial and the harmful.

The egregore of capital knows it needs the native body to dominate the land of which indigenous peoples are an intricate expression. However, the egregore knows its survival is at risk too — it fears the wooden stake of the peasant class.

“Bloodthirsty savagery”, which is often attributed to the Mayan people, far better describes U.S. foreign policy than any pre-Columbian civilization in the Americas. We ought to remember that the Mayan people still exist today, and they were and still are far from the backwards and underdeveloped stereotype propagated in mainstream media.

As the ravages of Empire play out, cultural recovery may become our goal again in the future — and we may find ourselves by choice or necessity living in small localized kinship groups once again, looking to our own ancestral traditions for a template to survival.

April was Indigenous Month in Brazil. This article reports on the Leadership of Indigenous Women conference in Salvador, and explores the personal and communal journey of indigenous women through generations.