Rebecca Manzi Putanny Yawanawá called on everyone to use our voice, our love and our brotherhood to dialogue and end unnecessary wars
@wisdom.keepers/Instagram
Putanny Yawanawá is a centric figure in the culture of the Yawanawá, one of the indigenous peoples of the Brazilian Amazon. The daughter of the legendary leader Tuin Kuru, she and her sister Hushahu became some of the first women of the tribe to obtain the highest spiritual initiation-a role generally seen as restricted to men.
This breakthrough merged the male and female realms into one, adding an extra dimension to the spirituality of Yawanawá and strengthening the cultural fabric of their community. Their dedication has opened up a path for many other women in the tribe to celebrate the magic of feminine spirituality. Nowadays, Putanny plays an active role in her community, leading spiritual retreats and trying to promote the cultural and spiritual heritage of the Yawanawá.
We want to emphasize something more important now, rather than talking strictly about her community role: a very emotional and powerful speech given lately by Putanny Yawanawá shared by many on social media. In this speech, one of the comments she made was with respect to the use of weapons: “Other ‘weapons’ are at our disposal, voice, love, humility, and patience”, she says, “and those shall be used with respect to the adversities of the contemporary world.”.
“Let us transcend our differences in skin, language, and colour”
In the following speech, Putanny Yawanawá called for a stop to violence and senseless destruction. One way, she offered, is through spiritual unity. Here are her words:
It is time today to cease from waging war with weapons to raise our voices. Your voice is your weapon, your love is your weapon. It is your humility; it is your patience. Those weapons that destroy do not create. Nothing is born of them; they only exist to destroy. When someone dies, nothing changes. We need to fight with other weapons and use new strategies.
In this vision, she sees people communicating and connecting with one another from their hearts, something transcendental of skin, language, and color differences that draws us back to the fact that we all are a part of one spirit.
This new strategy is our voice; it’s our alliance. Spiritual alliances are where we come into one family as brothers, sisters, where we care for each other, where we go beyond the differences of skin, of language, of color. We communicate with our heart and with our thoughts, and we feel ourselves to be one. One spirit.
In her words, she includes so much deep wisdom, a call for peace and unity among all people everywhere. She calls us to rise above differences and puts into our memory that we are all brothers and sisters. It is time to put an end to the unnecessary wars, which cause only destruction; instead, there should be room for dialogue so as to make a brighter future free from barbarity.
