User:Edouard Fortunato 2/Watatakalu Yawalapiti

Watatakalu Yawalapiti is a Brazilian indigenous activist, defender of the Amazon, Indian culture and women's rights. She is the leader of the Yawalapiti, one of the sixteen tribes of the Xingu people, who live in the northeastern state of Mato Grosso, in the southern Amazon.

She is expected to take over from the cacique Raoni in the representation of Amazonian indigenous peoples on the international stage.

Biography
Born in 1980, Watatakalu is the daughter of Pirakumã, a Yawalapiti tribal chief and former member of the National Indian Foundation who died around 2015, and who introduced her to politics. His mother is Yamoni, shaman of the Mehinako tribe, who died in 2021 of Covid-19. Fluent in Portuguese and five local languages, she studied - a rare case for a girl - at a white school in Canarana, despite the opposition of part of her family. At the age of 15, she was forcibly married off according to the customs of her people, an alliance she managed to escape from three years later without being consummated. In 2002, she adopted a little boy rejected by the community because his mother was single. In 2005, she married Ianukulá Kaiabi Suiá, with whom she had two children

Around the age of 18, she began campaigning for environmental and feminist causes. Her fight is to preserve the culture of the Amazonian Indians, rid of practices she considers sexist.

Initially local - she became chief of the Yawalapiti people and worked to protect her village in the Upper Xingu from fires and illegal mining and logging operations, or inaugurated the Women's House in the village of Kisêdje to oppose secular male power1 - her influence gradually spread to the Brazilian national level. She helped organize the first major gathering of the Xingu indigenous women's movement, held in Mato Grosso in May 2019. She is one of the Amerindian women mobilized in the face of the Covid-19 epidemic crisis, active in coordinating struggles.

In Brazil, she founded the National Articulation of Indigenous Women Warriors of Ancestry (ANMIGA), an association that helped propel Sônia Guajajara into Lula's government in 2023 as Minister of Indigenous Peoples, and Joenia Wapichana to the presidency of the National Indian Foundation.

She appeared on the international scene, notably at COP27. In 2023, she joined the hitherto male-dominated circle of cacique Raoni's right-hand men and was tipped to take over from him.

Opposition to Ysani Kalapalo, "Bolsonaro's Indian"
Ysani Kalapalo is presented by Jair Bolsonaro as the quasi-official representative of Brazil's indigenous peoples. Her detractors believe that the woman they dub "Bolsonaro's Indian" and who calls herself a "right-wing Indian" or "indigenous of the 21st century" is far from being one of the great voices of the cause but is really just a youtuber by profession. On her channel, followed in October 2019 by 292,000 people, Ysani extols the virtues of Bolsonaro, promotes farming in the Amazon and attacks Raoni, her favorite target.

Speaking of her, Watatakalu told Le Monde: "Ysani has no legitimacy to represent us or speak on our behalf. She's rotten, interested only in money and fame, and she's using the Xingu image for her own gain. It's madness. And it's very sad. ". Reiterating her support for Kayapo chief Raoni, she declares: "Raoni remains our leader. He's anything but a figure from the past. He was an example yesterday, he is an example today and he will remain an example tomorrow for my children ".

Watatakalu received the "Voice of the Voiceless" award on March 3, 2020 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, from Christiane de Wan, president of Collectif des femmes.