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The territory of Maxakali has once extended at least three large valleys in the Atlantic forest. The village elders remember how the forest has provided food, drugs and building materials – in addition to serving as a habitat for yãmĩyxop, spiritual beings at the center of Maxakali’s beliefs.
“There were drugs in the forest for us,” said Damásio. “When we had stomach aches, we would use the bark of trees to feel better. But now it’s just grass. Farmers have burned everything.”
But the four remaining Maxakali reserves – reduced to 6,434 hectares (15,900 acres) of pasture – contain less than 17% of their original vegetation. Some experts consider that the Atlantic forest is extinguished regional.
This absence has many Maxakali leaders who turn to reforestation – and find in their musical traditions an ecological plan of the past.
The song organizes life in Maxakali villages: music, for example, is used to cure disease, teach history or transmit practical instructions, such as how to make bags or weave fishing nets.
“The songs bind the whole social structure Tikmũ’ũn,” said Tugny, the coordinator of the Hāmhi project, who is also a musicologist at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. “People don’t make up songs. They have songs.”
Having a song, she added, means being able to take care of the spirit considered to be the creator of the song.
Ancestral songs also provide an extremely detailed register of local ecology. Twelve musical canons, distinct in grammar and lexicon, total about 360 hours of song. The lyrics are contained in the hundreds of flora and fauna species now extinct from the territory.
“We sing about everything: the young trees, the bananas, ourselves,” explained Manuel Kélé, chief of the village of Água Boa. “Even dogs have a song in our religion.”
A song, for example, lists 33 species of bees, some of which have no names in the national language of Brazil, the Portuguese, and only two are currently present on the territory. The words provide information on the behavior of bees that many Maxakali have never been witnesses to the first hand.
“The songs are snapshots,” said Tugny. “They are like photographs of each detail that exists in the Atlantic forest: the names of insects, birds, plants, moments of relationship between an animal and a sheet. All of these are recorded. “
For Maxakali, ritual songs also play a crucial role in helping the forest regenerate. The song is a daily part of their work in the trees of Hāmhi trees.
The nursery guards sing not only seeds when they are buried, but they also make music as part of the regular rhythms of harvest and culture. The guards divide into groups, position themselves around the nursery and sing together with each other. The words of the songs help the participants to remember the ecological knowledge of their ancestors.
And while some of Hāmhi’s work is dedicated to planting fruit trees and other crops, project managers consider reforestation as a key to reducing the regional fire risks.
Since its creation in 2023, the Hāmhi project has planted more than 60 hectares (148 acres) of fruit trees and 155 hectares (383 acres) of Atlantic forest vegetation. The objective is a re -appropriate area near this size.
Participants in the program also organized in a provisional fire brigade and even created natural fire barriers, using traditional methods such as planting fire -resistant vegetation.
“The songs help the forest to grow,” said Damásio, the village chief. “We ask those who died to help us. They walk here and help us. We call on the forest to repel. “
