I sing, therefore I am

reflection on a Tikmû’ûn song in a Porto Alegre cinema

Abstract

This essay investigates, based on an encounter with a filmmaker from the Tikmu'un people, also known as Maxakali, the boundaries between meaning, its translation and communication in situations where different cosmologies are placed side by side. From a song, it is thought how explanations, learning and teaching can be done in different ways in the cosmology of the Tikmu'un people and how these ways clash with the ways of teaching of non-indigenous people. Thus, in face of the rational, metaphorical and explanatory discourse of the meaning proper to non-indigenous cosmology, the indigenous teaching emerges in a kind of sonorocentrism, a pedagogy and an existence based on song and spirit.