Indigenous scholar Cash Ahenakew (Ahenakew,2019,p.21), when elaborating the differences between Indigenous and non Indigenous ways of being, proposes a different postulate for the cartesian logic I think therefore I am: “I land (i.e. come from the land), therefore I land (i.e. return to the land)." In this perspective, thought expands the modern/western function of making sense towards different capacities and relationships. 

 

For the Fulni-ô people, thought has a physical existence in the same way as our arms, legs or organs, and it is the place where the strength of the human body dwells. It is the core of spirituality, the connection with the sacred and the bridge through which we surrender to the invisible beings. 

 

Thought's materiality is also reinforced by Pitaguary people. Their healing processes involve active thinking, specially on sacred locations such as the cashew tree shrine. In their rituals, thoughts can be elevated through the use of fire, herbs and smudge. Healing relations can also be established between the Pajé thought and those that are sick, allowing healing to happen beyond spatial limitations. 

 

The capacity of thought to travel through the spirit of the wind is also acknowledged by Huni Kui people. Furthermore, they emphasize that thought can travel through time, reaching both past ancestries and future generations. It is through these capacities that the elders of the people affirm that it was possible to communicate with different times and to understand requests from animals and other non-human beings. 

 

For the Tremembe from Barra do Mundaú people, chants and prayers are used as a way to root your thoughts and receive orientations from the ancestors. Being people from the sea, their chants are always in relation with water, and they are in itself the journey of enchanted beings.  

 

I travel seven leagues, through the sunbeam.

I travel seven leagues, through the sunbeam. 

On the top of that hill, you find "lençol" beach. 

On the top of that hill, a sunbeam shone. 

On the top of that hill, an Indigenous person called me. 

 

For someone socialized in the institutions of modernity, such as the school system, those kinds of relationship with thought can be seen with suspicion, skepticism, or completely invalidated. That is why within GTDF collective, one of our pedagogical invitations when meeting alterity and other knowledge systems is to renounce from an arrogance cultivated for centuries by modernity/coloniality and to encounter other ways of knowing with humbleness and openness.