In-person events will take place at the Smith Warehouse, Bay 4, Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Durham, NC.
Hybrid events, with both online and in-person participation, will have speakers appear via Zoom and also interact with an in-person audience at Smith Warehouse. All times in the Program are EST (UTC/GMT -5).
Please email un9@duke.edu with any questions or feedback
Monday 01/29/24
2 pm – 3:15 pm – Law and Indigenous Territories (Hybrid) [lunch will be provided for in-person attendees of this event]
Description:
Bringing together Indigenous lawyers Ivo Makuxi and Maurício Terena from Brazil, this roundtable will discuss the importance of recognizing and protecting Indigenous territorial rights amid challenges from the agribusiness lobby and attempts to undermine Indigenous constitutional rights (the event will be held in Portuguese, with live English translations).
Participants:
Ivo Macuxi (Lawyer, legal advisor of the Roraima Indigenous Council – CIR, Brazil)
Mauricio Terena (Lawyer, legal advisor of the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil – APIB)
Moderator: Jamille Pinheiro Dias (London University, UK)
4:00 – 6:00 pm – Keynote by Robert Stam (New York University, EUA) – “Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze: Media Arts and Indigenous Activism in Brazil” (In-person)
6:00 – 9:00 pm – Opening reception (In-person)
Description:
Live music performance Noites Carolinas (Brazilian Choro music)
Tuesday 01/30/24
10 am – 11:15 am – Filmmaking Collectives and Afrodiasporic Identities in Urban Amazonia (Hybrid)
Description:
This roundtable explores the contemporary rise of Afroamazonian films in Brazil. It discusses the filmmaking practices enabling this surge, both ethically and materially, considering that many Afrodiasporic identities were previously “out of the map” of film representations about the region (the event will be held in Portuguese, with live English translations).
Participants:
Caio de Jesus (Na Cuia Produtora, Brazil)
Mayara Coelho (Negritar Filmes e Producoes, Brazil)
Rodrigo Antonio (Director of Training and Innovation at the Audiovisual Department of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, Brazil)
Moderator: Uriel Pinho (Duke University, USA)
11:45 am – 1 pm – Mapping Extractivism in the Amazon (Hybrid) [lunch will be provided for in-person attendees of this event]
Description:
Mining, extensive cattle ranching, timber industry. The Amazon is experiencing a cycle of expansion of extractive industries in the midst of a worsening global climate crisis and the indifference of conservative and alternative governments in the region. International criminal networks associated with local and national elites are fighting for the extraction of different natural resources. Investigative journalism has taken up the banner of denouncing these economic and political actors, showing the effects on local communities and Amazonian ecosystems. This roundtable takes up these experiences to think about the importance of mapping the dispossession and destruction, putting faces and names to those involved, as well as denouncing the territorial impacts of extractivism (the event will be held in Spanish, with live English translations)
Participants:
Ana Magalhaes (Sumauma Jornalismo, Brazil)
Bram Ebus (InfoAmazonia, Colombia)
Moderator: Marina Bedran (Johns Hopkins University, USA)
3 pm – Keynote by Jamille Pinheiro Dias (University of London) “Climates of Deceit: Environmental Rhetoric and Racialization in the Brazilian Amazon” (In-person)
Description:
This presentation will examine aspects of the racialization of environmental rhetoric, reality-making, and anti-Indigenous sentiment in Brazil, with a focus on the Amazon. It will also probe how Indigenous Amazonian artists and activists are offering critical responses to these issues.
Moderator: Nicoly Monteiro dos Santos (Duke University, USA)
5 pm – Film screening “Stepping softly on the Earth” followed by Q&A with director Marcos Colón (Florida State University, USA) (In-person)
Description:
In the documentary “Pisar Suavemente na Terra”, three Indigenous leaders from the Amazon try to keep their ways of being in the world alive. This is the story of Kátia, chief of the Akrãtikatêjê people, of Manoel, chief of the Munduruku people and of José Manuyama, a teacher of Kukama origin. The three narrate the threats to their territories promoted by large-scale mining, monoculture, oil extraction, logging and the construction of hydroelectric plants. Interconnected by the voice and ancestral thoughts of Ailton Krenak, these accounts of resistance present us with other ways of existing and walking in the world.
Moderators: Mateus Sanches Duarte (Duke University, USA), Jamille Pinheiro Dias (London University, UK)
Wednesday 01/31/24
11:30 am – 1 pm – New Social Cartography and Specific Territorialities at Volta Grande do Xingu (Xingu River’s Big Bend) (Hybrid) [lunch will be provided for in-person attendees of this event]
Description:
This roundtable presents academic and social movement’s perspectives on the “New Social Cartography”, which focuses on localized realities of traditional peoples and communities at Volta Grande do Xingu–Amazônia, locus of energy projects (UHE Belo Monte), gold mining and agro-strategies of land occupation (the event will be held in Portuguese, with live English translations).
Participants:
Ana Laide Soares Barbosa (Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre, Brazil)
Rosa Elizabeth Acevedo Marin (UFPA/UEMA/PNCSA, Brazil)
Elielson Pereira da Silva (UFRA/UFPA/PNCSA, Brazil)
Moderator: Maria Fantinato G. Siqueira (Duke University, USA)
1:45 pm – 3 pm – Presentation by Aminah Ghaffar (7 Directions of service, USA) – “Breaths Together for a Change (BTC): Creating a World of Feeling and Seeing No Strangers” (In-person) [lunch will be provided]
Description:
Breaths Together for a Change (BTC): Creating a World of Feeling and Seeing No Strangers is a pilot program that uses an unconventional meditation method to test an approach for eradicating racial bias. BTC meditations are designed to enhance understanding of the nature of bias as driven by faulty alarms in the body. BTC meditations draw on Eastern wisdom traditions, Western sciences, and Indigenous epistemology to create an integrative approach to build mind-body capacities for neuroliberatory reckonings.
Moderator: Jan Koplow (Duke University, USA)
