My mind has opened up to drawing since I was little. I would go play-hunting in the forest and end up drawing on trees or in the ground after moving dead leaves. As I grew older, I kept drawing until I realized what I was doing. Then I asked myself: "How will I draw the things I see?". So I took a liking to it, and kept drawing that way as I grew up, opening my mind by playing. That's how I learned to draw. I didn't figure out drawing all at once, no. It wasn't like that, it was little by little. I'm a Yanomami, so my mind opened up to drawing in the forest little by little. It wasn't in the city. Nobody taught me; it was the forest that first taught me how to draw. It was in the middle of the forest, playing, that my mind really opened up to drawing. That's how I started drawing and that's why I continue to this day. 

I don't draw without reason; I'm inspired by the words of the shamans. Those with the most beautiful chants, those who really know how to make the words of the xapiri pë spirits heard. When they hold their shamanic sessions, I listen to their chants, record all the words in my mind and then turn them into drawings. I then draw everything that the shamans describe: the spirits, their ornaments, their paths, the places where they come down, and so I draw the words of the spirits that I hear in our house.

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Originally published in O espírito da floresta, org. Bruce Albert and Davi Kopenawa, Cia. das Letras, 2023