Series - FotoSlovo 2026 - Category « Trip / Essay »

Puka-kam-kuben: literally “earth-within-people”, the underground people. In Xikrin mythology, the puka-kam-kuben, who emerged from the very bowels of the earth, were eradicated by the Xikrin after they ate one of their own.

In the Xikrin do Cateté Indigenous Territory in Brazil, the Cateté River is polluted by the mining company Vale, which operates a nickel mine. In 2024, a study found that 98.5% of the tested population was contaminated with heavy metals. While some report skin irritations, headaches, vomiting, and congenital malformations, professor João Paulo Botelho refers to a “chemical ethnocide.” Despite everything, the population keeps its culture alive and protects its identity tied to this river. The company denies any liability while several European companies source materials from that mine.

Xikrin mythology, which ascribes hellish characteristics to the underworld, lends a cosmological dimension to this struggle against the figure of the world-devourer embodied by Vale and the myth of green extractivism.

Below, an extract of one of the three Xikrin myths as transcribed by anthropolog Lux Vidal (in Morte e Vida de uma sociedade indigena brasileira: os Kayapó-Xikrin do rio Cateté, 1977) :
"Then two strangers emerged from underground.
They came back up to the surface and filled in the hole with grass.
They had large machetes. [...]
[Struck by one man’s arrow and struck by the other’s machete,] an Indian fell to the ground. The two strangers took him underground to eat him. The Indian’s brother went looking for him but couldn’t find him.
He called everyone, and two of them went underground. Once they got there, theyfound the underground men eating the roasted brother. They managed to kill two of them. [...]
The two Indians were the first to come out, climbing up the vine.
The underground men were chasing them, and the Indians killed many of them.
Then they threw hot water and cut the vine they had climbed up.
The vine fell, and the puka-kam-kuben all died.
And so, they never return."

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