Ailton Krenak

Ailton Krenak was born in 1953 in the Doce River valley region of Brazil, a territory of the Krenak people and a place whose ecology has been severely impacted by mining. An activist in the environmental movement and in defense of Indigenous rights, he organized the Aliança dos Povos da Floresta (Alliance of Forest Peoples), which unites riverine and Indigenous communities in the Amazon. He is one of the most prominent leaders of the movement that emerged from the Indigenous Awakening in the 1970s in Brazil, and he also contributed to the creation of the Union of Indigenous Nations (UNI). His struggles in the 1970s and 1980s were decisive for the inclusion of the chapter on Indigenous rights in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, which guaranteed Indigenous rights to ancestral homelands and culture. He is the co-author of the UNESCO proposal that created the Serra do Espinhaço Biosphere Reserve in 2005 and is a member of its managing committee. He was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit by the President of the Republic in 2016, and he holds an honorary doctorate from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. His previous book, Ideas to Postpone the End of the World, was an international bestseller, with more than 50,000 copies sold in Brazil alone. Polity published his books Life Is Not Useful (2023) and Ancestral Future (2024).