THE DAY I HELD THE SUN BOY IN MY ARMS – by Veronica Pinheiro

"With thin and strong threads
The spiders weave
Their webs.
Sometimes,
a drop of water
hangs,
or a ray of Sun."¹

There are many ways to tell the story of a place. This diary presents the records of a teacher who, from the school library, weaves threads of memories. Sometimes awakened, sometimes constructed, these memories are composing a web with thin and strong threads. A web with invisible threads that connect dreams, forests, villages, quilombos, cities, rivers, large and small beings. With the spider, the Huni Kuï women learned the art of weaving, the enchanted spider Basne Puru Yuxibu is the guardian of the cotton threads and the knowledge of weaving. With the shaman Dua Busë, I learned to weave paths for a living school. Dua Busë lives in the Heart of the Forest Village, in Acre state, he is the guardian of deep lore of Huni Kuin cosmology.

Weaving is a delicate work, it requires constancy and spirit, a silent spirit that needs to be renewed with some frequency. When weaving with threads of memory, a multitude supports the hands that weave. And it´s this multitude of visible and invisible beings that make it possible to dream of life and practice good living. The weaving is movement, a permanent dynamic that occurs in many directions, opening paths and generating possibilities.

In 2025, the Ways of Knowing Group will continue weaving meetings, workshops, and outings with the children of Municipal School Professor Escragnolle Dória; simultaneously, it will be generating movements to expand and deepen dialogues with Management Departments and Education Secretariats, Social Projects, and other schools. These dialogues are not always sweet and deepening them sometimes means knowing pains that we wouldn't see if memories were not awakened.

Returning to the Pedreira Favela Complex is part of this movement to expand and deepen dialogues, while renewing our commitment and courage. 'We agreed not to die.' This agreement was signed in the Ancestral Memories Cycle, during the Vigil of Orality, and is renewed with each new cycle that Selvagem allows me to share. The first month of school is the time to understand the state of the territory, and also to listen to the desires of the children and adults.

With the meeting prepared, the books separated, and the reading room organized, it was time to resume activities interrupted by the school holidays. On the first day of meeting with the children, with the box of books in my hands, I repeatedly heard the sounds of gunfire very close to the school. Immediately, I went to the classroom to meet the students. When I opened the door, I found all the children crouched on the floor to protect themselves from the shots. In the corner of the room, under the table, trembling with fear, the Sun boy covered his ears with his hands; with his mouth closed, he prayed that no one would get hurt.

The Sun boy, as the student became known, played the role of the Sun in the film produced by the children at the end of the 2024 school year. Resulting from the workshops 'Playing Lights Up the Sun' (workshops facilitated by Paula Novaes, Carol Delgado, and Clarissa Viegas), the film made by the children is a beautiful experience of listening and creation. For a few weeks, the shyest boy in the fourth grade was the 'Sun of the School.' Playing the Sun, he shone in such a sensitive way that he managed to move teachers, staff, and the children of the school during the film screenings in the reading room.

We ended the activities in 2024 with the Sun boy calling for the summer holidays. Returning to Pedreira and finding him frozen with fear was too hard. Without knowing exactly what was happening outside the school, to the terrifying sound of gunfire from the war, I also got down on the floor with the children. Under the tables, I distributed poetry books. 'The web of waters, who would like to read?' Curiously, everyone wanted to read, because as they read, they could occupy other places and leave where we were, even if only in their imagination. I held the Sun boy in my arms, seeing that he couldn't read alone.

When I read: 'A giant forest / breathes. 

'The boy took a timid breath. 

I continued reading: 'Amazon is its name.' 

The boy in my arms looked at me while I read, as he had realised that 'breathes' was not an imperative spoken by me to him, but a vital process performed by the 'giant forest.' His gaze seemed to be the gaze of someone who remembered something. I believe the boy remembered the forest and continued to breathe. In my arms, he dared to continue reading and, like the flying rivers that cry when embracing the mountains, he also cried. These witnessed tears called me to stay. To stay weaving affections. To stay by the children's side. 'Weaving is a delicate work, it requires constancy and spirit; a silent spirit that needs to be renewed with some frequency,' I kept repeating this out loud. I’m still repeating this now

¹ The web of waters, by Roseana Murray and Bia Hetzel.

WEAVING BRIDGES BETWEEN WORLDS – by Cristine Takuá

"The embaúba, tuthii, is the mother-fiber because it is magical.
It can make women transform into anacondas, produce bees,
perform hunts, and weave paths that reach the celestial villages."

For a long time, I dreamed of creating an interweaving of knowledge with the presence of the Maxakali shamans and the elder Delcida with the young Guarani, so that together we could walk in the forest and exchange the knowledge of Nhe’ëry. 

Photos: Anna Dantes

Delcida Maxakali is a master of songs, stories, and the art of embaúba, being one of the main elders of the Village-School-Forest. Born in one of the oldest villages of the Maxakali Indigenous Land, in Pradinho, Delcida keeps in her memory the history of her ancestors' displacements through the territory, preserved in her songs and tales. For years, she lived in the Aldeia Verde reserve, facing enormous difficulties in accessing water. Despite her advanced age, she was one of the main leaders to decide to leave the territory in July 2020. Today, she´s a great supporter of the Living School in the Village-School-Forest, a space for the preservation of cultural heritage and environmental conservation of the Maxakali territory.

Photos: Rodrigo Duarte

It was very powerful and meaningful for the Maxakali Living School group to feel the living forest, in the songs of the birds, in the crystal-clear water, in the many medicines found along the way, and in the collected embaúba fibers. Everyone was filled with joy to collect jaborandi seedlings to take for the women to use after childbirth. 

Foto: Rodrigo Duarte

With the permission of the Ija kuery and the yãmĩyxop, from December 12 to 18, 2024, we held an artistic and spiritual residency at the Living School Mbya Arandu Porã. The meeting brought together young people from the Living School Guarani of Tekoa Rio Silveira and a Guarani family from Piaçaguera, Suri Jera, Samira Mindua, Josiane Pará, and Simone Jaxuka, 14 representatives from Living School Maxakali, coordinated by Sueli and Isael Maxakali, an artist from the Witoto people Aimema Uai, from Colombia, Freg Stokes, writer, performer, and cartographer from Melbourne, Australia, Brisa Flow, singer, composer, hip hop culture MC, and her partner Ian Wapixana, artist who, along with Caio Tupã, captured sounds during the meeting. We also had the presence of Anita Ekman, independent curator and artist, Sandra Benites, educator, curator, and representative of Funarte, Anna Dantes, editor, coordinator, and creator of Selvagem cycle of studies about life, Verônica Pinheiro, educator and coordinator of the Selvagem Learning Group, and Alice Faria, translator and coordinator of the Translations of the Selvagem group. Débora, Renata, Tajiana and Ronia, who participated through Goethe Institute. Rodrigo Duarte, visual artist, captured images and sounds to collaboratively compose creative material from the residency, Anai Vera, anthropologist, helped organize the meeting, and Ana Estrela, anthropologist, represented the Museum of Indigenous Cultures.

Photos: Alice Faria and Rodrigo Duarte

Through exchanges, we were able to weave bridges between many worlds through art and the ancestral thinking of the peoples who gathered to transmit messages of regeneration and expansion of consciousness. The exchange between the Guarani and Maxakali people enabled a dive into the Nhe’ëry forest, Mata Atlântica [Atlantic Forest], in search of embaúba, a native plant in our forest to extract its fiber and produce arts that heal and enchant. Through songs, the Maxakali women dialogue with the ants and the spirit of the embaúba to ask for permission for its harvest. During the walks in the forest, many medicinal plants and seedlings were also identified and collected.

Photos: Anna Dantes e Carlos Papá

The Living Schools led the entire residency process. Together with the artists present, we produced a large collective canvas featuring forest beings. Some map canvases were also created, tracing the territories where the represented peoples live. The children, guided by Veronica's brilliance, worked with clay to create shapes, painted canvases with natural paints depicting animated narratives, and made drawings with leaves using the light of the Sun.

Photo: Carlos Papá

Photos: Rodrigo Duarte e Anna Dantes

On the full moon of December 14, we held a spiritual ceremony to celebrate the union of the forest peoples and to strengthen the healing processes of the body and the earth through dialogue with the spirit of the plant.

Foto: Rodrigo Duarte

Each teaching, each story told by the shamans, each song sung by the youth, children, and elders formed a bond of strength and transformation. Lightning, thunder, and strong winds accompanied the week we spent together at my home, Tekoa Rio Silveira.

The crystal-clear waters descending from the mountains of Serra do Mar enchanted everyone, especially the elder Delcida Maxakali, mother of Isael and great-grandmother of Bidé, Cassiel.

They were magical days 

Days of healing and re-enchantments

The Living Schools continue to pulse 

Within our hearts 

And deep within our

Most profound memories.

Photos: Rodrigo Duarte

*   *   *

Joining forces and desires, Selvagem and the Goethe-Institut collaborate in the realisation and documentation of the residency at the Guarani Living School within the scope of the Cosmoperceptions of the Forest project, which traverses the planetary connections of forests and their management practices for a collective cultural construction by forest peoples. With five residencies in South America and Europe, the initiative of the Goethe-Institut Rio de Janeiro centralises traditional territories, maps the environmental history of forests, and highlights scientific and cosmological connections. This project starts from existing initiatives in indigenous and traditional territories that work to regenerate relationships between many species, human and non-human, based on the ways of life of forest peoples.  

The residency at Aldeia Rio Silveira, created by Cris Takuá and Carlos Papá, brings together Indigenous leaders from various territories around the construction of the prayer house, as well as the plant laboratory and the actions of the Guarani Living School. Living School is an initiative of the Selvagem cycle. Living School strengthens and transmits traditional knowledge of various Indigenous peoples, including the Maxakali, Huni Kuï, Tukano-Dessano-Tuyuka, Guarani, and Baniwa.

LONG LIVE THE BANIWA LIVING SCHOOL – by Cristine Takuá

Personal collection of Francy Baniwa

The Baniwa Living School arrived with the Long Live the Living School page exhibition and, following the celebration and meeting we held in December 2023, together we were able to begin a new journey of strengthening and activation of knowledge and know-how.

The Baniwa collective is holding lots of classes on swiddens, arumã basketry, basketry with titica vine and imbé vine, drawings, pottery, blessings, songs, dances and indigenous literature. A very profound strength is blossoming in the Assunção do Içana community, located in the Upper Rio Negro Indigenous Territory, in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Amazonas State).

Personal collection of Francy Baniwa

Francy and her father Francisco Baniwa are the coordinators of this dream and these actions activated in their territory. Francy is a connoisseur of the swidden, the river and the forest. She is also an anthropologist and has been bringing the strength and power of her people's philosophy to the world through academic dialogues. 

She tells us that the announcement of support to encourage and strengthen a Living School in her community came with great celebration and enthusiasm from everyone – children, young people and elders.

“The wise ones spoke about the moment. Everyone was moved and remembered in so many words that we are a Living School. Our territory, our languages, the chants, sacred places, the swiddens, drylands, capoeiras, igapós, the communities, everything is a Living School, because we are knowledgeable, we are the living memory. From waking up until the end of the day, when it's time to rest, we do many things, which is why we are the Living School itself. Knowing the techniques of braiding with our fingertips is the most beautiful science there is.”

The dream of the Baniwa Living School began to blossom with the launch of the book Umbigo do Mundo [World’s Navel] – Mitologia, Ritual e Memória Baniwa Waliperedakeenai, published by Dantes. Since the launch, during the Vigil of Orality at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, a new path has been opening up, as Francy herself says: 

“I've reached this stage of bringing their words for you to know, to understand our world, how we are, and why we dance, why we heal, why we bless, why birds are the way they are, why human beings are the way they are.”

And in this dialogue with her father, together with the paintings of her brother Frank, she promotes a literary and anthropological event that deserves to be celebrated, as Idjahure Kadiwel says in the book's introduction.

Month after month, Francy tells us what is being done in her community, even though she is also activating many pathways in the city. She is studying and articulating many routes, whether in the São Paulo University chair, with indigenous women filmmakers or in her doctoral studies. Even so, she is always in communication with the teams that work directly at the Living School. Her main focus of inspiration is the children and young people – she is concerned with activating their deepest memories so that they can continue to follow in the footsteps of their saviours.

Personal collection of Francy Baniwa

“Being a child in the community, in the village, is different. Our greatest joy is when we get to the fields and come across different fruits. That's our greatest wealth. Smiles stretch far and wide! What a joy it is to be able to pick up a watermelon and eat it in the middle of the fields, while your grandmother, aunt and mother are taking care of the fields, weeding and looking after other fruits and maniocs.

The swidden is the place that brings me peace, happiness and security.

Being a swidden owner is a beautiful profession full of grit and determination.

Being a swidden owner is being a hard worker with a lot of sweat, under the rain and the sun.

Being a swidden owner means taking care of the swidden, weeding, uprooting manioc, carrying it on your back, scraping and grating it. It's not for everyone.

I'm very proud to be a swidden owner and a researcher, I'm a doctor of the swidden and of the university.

Good living

Living well

Eating organic watermelon straight from Mother Earth. Is there any greater love than that?”

Personal collection of Francy Baniwa

AT THE MARGINS OF RIO – by Veronica Pinheiro

Every weekday, since February, I've been diving onto the asphalt that leads to Favela da Pedreira. Sometimes body and thought move across the thick bitumen surface, sometimes thought moves alone along suspended paths. For many days, words appeared before the Sun. Moonlight was celebrated with gratitude – returning was always a doubt. The Sun was greeted with prayers and repeated requests: “double the strength of the arm, don't let me go alone”.

Just like the girl in the red hoodie, I walked along the way. Anything could happen on the Botafogo Road. However, unlike the girl in the red hoodie, I was never alone on the way. Between stops, in the text and by bus, I went along as a body in the world, willing to make friends with wolves and meet grannies.

Like someone who brings and carries news, I listened, took notes, observed, asked little so as not to lead the voice I heard. Eyes, ears and heart were attentive to the path. A fluid path, full of edges, crossroads and barricades. A place of intersection where the voice of the wind still speaks in the hearts of the children. We continued along the margins of the city of Rio de Janeiro, almost reaching Baixada Fluminense - the Pavuna region, where the school is located, is the boundary between the city of Rio de Janeiro and the city of São João de Meriti. 

On the margins of Rio, we can find a life pushed into invisibility. A life I wouldn't wish to any child. There was, however, so much enthusiasm for living that the stories lived on the margins were spread around in the pages of diaries.

Ways of Knowing Diaries is a series of notes and thoughts. A tangle of speeches and narratives. It's a fabric made of wide smiles and hugs with short arms. And it is the reaffirmation of life and the claim for good living at school. I've heard that ‘reaffirmation of life’ is the new cliché. So be it! In a marginalised territory, marked by the early death of bodies and dreams, we greet life every day with reading, study, games, workshops and outings. 

The children at the Professor Escragnolle Dória Municipal School gave me back my love of writing and of the classroom. With Cristine Takuá I broadened the concept of classroom and had the courage to break away from the margins established by the curriculum. In general, the process of schooling deterritorialises within the territory. It leaves the child's identity in the background, determines what is important or not to know, determines what to eat, how to dress, it distances what is sacred and imposes new ways of life.

The children and Cristine invited me to trust in life, to observe the treetops and listen to the wind. With them, I was a sumahuman, an ant and a bird. The Living School, expressed in the voice and gestures of Cristine Takuá, is a school for the strengthening of territory, a school of practices and sharing. The strength of a Living School lies in listening and awakening memories. Not being afraid to awaken memories is the greatest of all learning experiences.

No Living School is the same as another, there is no intention of creating standards. The territory and the memories of life present in the many layers stored in the body of time, in the body of the earth and in the bodies-territories point to paths that need to be observed and understood.

Nego Bispo says that”‘when we confluence, we don't cease being us, we become us and other people – we yield”.

What you've read over the past few months were pages that yielded from a teacher's encounter with a wise woman who invited her to embark on a canoe trip. Each text here was preceded by water. From this side of the margin, I say goodbye with asphalt under my feet and water in my eyes. 

Awrê!

See you next school year.

OPY'I, OUR TRUE SCHOOL – by Cristine Takuá

Living knowledge and practice

Photo: Cristine Takuá

For a few months now, we've been building a house of prayer in the middle of the forest for studies and concentration retreats. The whole process is being carried out with materials taken from the forest: wood, vines to tie it together, straw to cover it and clay to make the walls. A living, natural house, made with the ancient knowledge of traditional Guarani architecture. As well as technique, there is a sensitive wisdom that follows the guidance of time. There is the right time to harvest the wood, the straw and the vines.

In today's world, listening to and observing the weather is no longer the first step to practising knowledge, because everything is bought and sold all the time. Everything contains agrochemicals and insecticides, and everything ends up being disconnected from this deep sense of knowing how to wait for the time.

For this reason, carrying out this construction is a practice of the Living School, in which young people and even children take part, helping to clay the walls. In this way, we ensure and make it possible for this knowledge to live on in our memories.

Photos: Carlos Papá

Opy'i is the house of prayers, the house of healings, the house of awakenings and the place where people learn. There is a large classroom in each territory. We dance, rest, meditate and transform ourselves within this sacred house. It's a place of shelter and counselling. 

Each people names this sacred space in their own way, and all have a very intimate and true relationship with this classroom. The idea of a school is always a square place with desks, chairs and blackboards. In the house of prayer, the essential thing is the fire, the great teacher who assists the spiritual work and warms up the long nights of study.

Knowing how to get in and out of this classroom is a lesson that is taught from the time we are babies. There is an ethic that guides our relationships within Opy'i, and everyone – children, young people, men and women – has their own role and orientation in the learning process.

Photo: Carlos Papá

Fotos: Cristine Takuá

Unlike hospitals 

And health centres 

The Opy'i or prayer house 

Is not only a healing space 

But also an educational centre

The true school 

There we talk about dreams, we heal

 and we also learn good and beautiful

Ways of practising the Good Living 

Teko Porã. 

How good it is to sing, to dance 

To play Takuapu, Maracá

To feel this special place!

To be around loved ones 

Who often, even in

Silence

Transmit more messages than if they were talking

But unfortunately, today, many only seek it out  

When ailments of the body or soul affect them 

But it shouldn't be that way!

Our medicines don't come packaged in plastic like those in pharmacies, 

They flourish in the midst of waterfalls, streams, sacred mountains...

Healing men and women 

Spiritual leaders

Are just watching 

The spread of evangelicals invading

The sacred Tekoa 

The increasing influence 

Of the use of antibiotics and painkillers

The encouragement of hospital births 

It's time to wake up!

To value the traditional knowledge and practices that bring joy to our souls.

We urgently need to 

Honour the traditions of healing 

And spirituality of ancient cultures 

And thus calm 

The spirits of the forest

Who are angry 

Tired of so much contradiction

From us so-called thinking beings!

May this reflection fly far and wide

As the smoke that comes out of our pipes rises and may it touch 

The hearts of sensitive beings!

All respect to the medicines that come from the forest!

All respect to the praying men and women 

Who have balanced life here on Earth

For so many centuries!

Aguyjevete!

Photo: Cristine Takuá

Photo: Carlos Papá

—

The construction of the Opy'i in the territory of Rio Silveiras Village has the support of Goethe-Institut. 

At the beginning of December, a residency led by Cristine Takuá and Carlos Papá will take place, bringing together indigenous leaders from different territories around the construction of the prayer house in Rio Silveiras Village. As well as building together, there will be a plant laboratory and the participation in the activities of the Guarani Living School.

Joining forces and desires, Selvagem and the Goethe-Institut are collaborating on the realisation and documentation of the residency at Escola Viva Guarani as part of the Cosmopercepções da Floresta [Cosmoperceptions of the Forest] project.

TINY LITTLE STONES – by Veronica Pinheiro

“Tiny little stone from Aruanda – eh!
Such a huge flat rock
Little stone from Aruanda - eh!”

Writing Diaries was an assignment I received from Anna Dantes, the creator of Selvagem, a cycle of studies. At the time, I thought we wouldn't have enough material to publish in 35 texts. The mission became a journey through ways of knowing and enchantment for me. I spent almost 200 days with 420 children a week. It was many days of listening and telling stories. It was 145 pages written with smiles, fears, songs, drawings and hugs.

The school was the thread that sewed my wanderings together in 2024. All the texts written described the experiences and experiments shared with the children. On this penultimate page, however, I would like to talk about the teaching staff that make up the Professor Escragnolle Dória Municipal School. From the kitchen to the gate, all the school staff are educators, as they teach and share knowledge with the children on a daily basis. When it comes to primary schools, there is nothing new about the fact that the teaching body we see is a female body. A body made up of mothers who clean, cook, teach, coordinate and manage a routine full of challenges. Throughout the Ways of Knowing journey, I could also notice Pedreira in the bodies and gestures of these women mothers-teachers. All 14 classes are led by a female teacher; the cleaning, kitchen and gate staff are mostly women; the management team is also made up of women. 

We won't talk here about caring and the reasons why education is a feminine environment in which men are the exponents. In the land of Marias, Josés are applauded – men sign educational proposals and give names to methods. For now, I'll talk about the ethical, social and organic commitment to life that I saw in the vigilant eyes that watched me every day in the Favela da Pedreira. I remember the mistrust in the first few weeks. I welcomed them all knowing that, for a teacher, someone who shares a journey with her is much better than manuals with revolutionary ideas. 

We experience with adults and children: practices of unconfinement, movements to broaden the gaze, weaving of territorial webs, affective proximity with nature, the poetics of backyards, the syntax of the body…

We do not talk to adults and children about: practices of unconfinement, movements to broaden the gaze, weaving of territorial webs, affective proximity with nature, the poetics of backyards, the syntax of the body…

We had a total of 0 lectures throughout the year and 0 pedagogical trainings.

Life happens in a web of ongoing relationships. Our care leaned towards the relationships we established. In a Living School, learning is lived and shared. Curiously, at most of the congresses on playing I attended, nobody was playing. Just as congresses on orality often result in written texts about orality. While calling for a pluriversal and cosmological education, we present neither formula nor form. 

I learnt in this land of women to celebrate tiny little things and to work in silence in order to let land speak for themselves; just like Sun, who rises in silence, knowing exactly what has to be done. Sun doesn't do anything new but exactly the same thing every day, and that's where the generosity lies. An indigenous Macuxi friend told me that Sun is a feminine entity. That's why... at this moment, I pay homage to the sun-women of Pedreira who, on a daily basis, have helped us to conclude this Learning Cycle.

In the complex immensity of Favela da Pedreira, Daniele, Genicelle and Vera are little stones and, at the same time, huge lajedos, flat rocks. Lajedos are geological formations sculpted by time, common in arid and semi-arid places, which are home to pools of water and a diversity of life due to the unique conditions found in these rock formations. In the dryness felt and experienced in the territory where the school is located, I saw shelter and life; a life that was different from the life of the territory, with unique conditions. A life derived from the commitment and love of the teachers and staff. P. Escragnolle Dória municipal school is a lajedo-school of which I am a part, made up of tiny little stones.

My gratitude to the sun women from Pedreira:

Aline Lopes
Analice Lima
Anaquel Albuquerque
Ana Paula Pequeno
Beatriz Ferreira
Conceição Correia
Cristiane Paula
Daniele Oziene Lima
Deise Patrocínio
Denise Lopes
Derli Monteiro
Érika Fraga
Genicelle Colchone
Glória Alencar
Ivone Pacheco
Ivy Passos
Janaína Chaves
Karine Machado
Leidiane de Paula
Lena de Abreu
Lílian Moreira
Lúcia dos Santos
Luciene Justino
Maria José Rodrigues
Michelle Bessa
Miriam Ribeiro
Monique Ribeiro
Rosana Moraes
Sabrina Amarantes
Sandra Helena Santos
Simone Rezende
Sônia Maria Oliveira
Taís Nunes
Thassia Oliveira
Vera Lucia Lavatori

My gratitude to 

Felipe Rodrigues
Iranildo da Silva
Rober da Silva
José Roberto Oliveira
Wagner Clayton Nascimento

TERRITORIES OF CONNECTION, ACTIVATION OF HEALING AND MEMORIES – by Cristine Takuá

Photo: Carlos Papá

Walking through enchanted mountains and lagoons, I felt, saw and experienced very deep sensations in this ancient territory of ancestral memories. Huaraz, Huascaran and Chavin de Huantar are places of connection, gateways to very ancient times, where many walks were held for spiritual encounters and exchanges of knowledge about medicines, healing practices and good ways of living.

Visiting museums and archaeological sites, I recalled conversations with João Paulo Tukano about the palace of the dead, as he and his people call museums. Some time ago, João Paulo, an anthropologist and coordinator of the Bahserikowi Living School, wrote a text called Palace of the Dead, in which he reflects deeply on these spaces where objects are taken and kept like deceased people.

João says that “even if we were to bring them back, they would no longer be of any use to us, because the knowledge that resided in them has gone along with their owners. We don't know from which people or clans they came, and this information is essential for carrying out the appropriate Bahsese rituals demanded for their use and preservation. If we were to recover them one day, we would run the risk of contracting incurable diseases. That's why it's best to leave them where they are. That house they call a museum, where they keep the Bahsa busa (diadems) and other indigenous artefacts, is a house of the dead. The museum is a palace of the dead.”

Huaraz Museum
Photo: Carlos Papá

Respecting these beings/objects and understanding the spiritual dimension that permeates the various indigenous cultures is an ethical commitment that everyone should have. I observe and assume that climate emergencies also reflect this maladjusted way in which human beings walk the Earth, disrespecting spirituality and very ancient places that hold memories of profound knowledge.

In Chavin de Huantar, I heard a story from Martin Loarte, the guide who accompanied us on the visit to the archaeological site, who told us that recently archaeologists discovered ceramics in an ancient ceremonial space, took them out and sent them to a museum in Lima. There was a ceramic in the shape of a Condor, a very sacred bird in the Andes. A few days after this removal, a large hill on a mountain near the archaeological site collapsed. Martin went to talk to an elder and asked him why he thought it had fallen like that. The elder man told him that, for a long time, a large condor would fly over the area, circle round and round and then sit on top of the hill. And he believed that the fact that they had dug up that pottery had disturbed the Condor's spirit, which consequently caused the hill to slide down.

The path from Huaraz to Chavin
Photo: Cristine Takuá

Ceremonial centre of Chavin de Huantar
Photo: Cristine Takuá

Huascaran Park
Photo: Carlos Papá

This narrative touched me deeply and made me think about the urgencies of life, about knowing how to get in and knowing how to get out, about asking permission and knowing how to listen to our surroundings.

There is a principle that governs our existences. Among the many realities that inhabit this Earth, which reality guides you? Health and illness are reflections of our journey. Respecting the guardian spirits of everything that exists is the first premise of life. The first lesson that should be taught in schools, before literacy, is that we should know how to respect the owners/guardians of the mountains, waters, stones and all beings.

The Bahserikowi Medicine Centre has come up with a decolonial proposal for thinking about caring for the body, mind and spirit. Through traditional practices of care and attention, the kumuã, specialists in healing, blessing and health practices, have been developing a very strong work in the centre of Manaus, the capital of the Amazon.

In this connection between territories of awakening, we walk forward seeking to activate healings and memories.

Carlos Papa and guide Martin Loarte in Chavin de Huantar
Photo: Cristine Takuá

In Chavin, at the Archaeological Site, together with the sacred Wachuma (in the background)
Photo: Renata Borges

Photo by João Paulo Tukano

LISTEN TO THE CHILDREN – by Veronica Pinheiro

On 15 November 2024, the event is not 420 children from a public school talking to a teacher about their dreams for a living school. The event is: memories of a living school are awakened in 420 children and one teacher. 

In February, one of the things that most caught my attention was the aggressive way in which the children reacted to their classmates' teasing, or how they simply used force to tell other children to stay away. I had never witnessed such young children leading such violent scenes. 

I asked a girl where she learnt to beat people up like that. The answer was: ‘I was beaten up every day by other people, so I learnt how to beat them. By doing what everyone else does."

‘Everybody who?’. This was a question my mum always asked me when I used 'everybody' as the subject of a sentence. And then my mum would say that everyone is a lot of people. And that we should only observe the people we trust. 

Like this girl, I was introduced to the many forms of violence at a young age, while my community was preparing me to be free and happy. Our elders were our masters and teachers. The ancestors were our lap and foundation. Love and kindness were cultivated on a daily basis, to the point where the violence that subjugated the bodies was unable to imprison them.

After listening to the girl who beat up the other children, I asked everyone else throughout the year why they reacted so impetuously. There were two answers: ‘I don't know’ or ‘I need to defend myself’. In the first week of school, I replied to a boy who wanted to know if I was the "keep order" type of person. I told him that I was learning to tread softly on the ground and that I had chosen to be a gentle person. By treading softly on the earth, we look for other ways to walk through the world. And one of them is to walk asking for permission to enter and leave places.

Listening to children is a form of asking for permission. Before telling children what we think about the violence they reproduce, we should try to listen to them. Listening to children was the best thing we could do in 2024. Throughout the year, we, the school's teachers, management and staff, tried to share an environment with the children where they wouldn't have to defend themselves. An environment where they could just be children.

Teacher Janaína was given one of the biggest challenges: she was in charge of a class of 32 students who were unable to say what they felt or wanted. It took many months of listening, breathing exercises and sharing other possible ways of inhabiting the school. We ended the year with appeased children. Janaína's work is admirable. The class is now able to play without fights. I spent two hours with the children in Janaína's class on 14 November, and I was thrilled to see them telling the stories they had created. I then played with them the games they had invented in the Reading Circle.

When I talk about the awakening of a living school, I talk because I have seen children living and smiling in a territory that normalises violence. They are living and can be happy as their memories of life are awakened. For the first time today, 14 November, not a single story written in the narrative-creation class mentioned violence. All, absolutely all of the stories written and told by the children today spoke of kindness, celebration and dreams.

For the first time, I left school on a Thursday, tired from playing and smiling so much. And this is only possible because the life contained in the memories of the territory and the territory-bodies has been calling us to dance and live in times of gentleness. I hope that the awakened memory continues to speak and be heard by my little companions.

PROFOUND ENCOUNTERS - by Cristine Takuá

Over the last few days I've been hiking around Huaraz in Peru, the highest tropical mountain range in the world. I was invited to take part in a conference on Climate and Epistemic Justice, organised by WikiAcción Peru. This meeting brought together several youngsters and some indigenous leaders from various peoples and countries.

During the conference, there was a round of dialogues with two teachers, Carlos Papá and Grimaldo Rengifo, who is a Peruvian educator, writer, thinker and researcher in intercultural education. These were moments of very profound exchanges and of sowing reflections for transformation in life.

The next morning I woke up thinking about the complexity of indigenous philosophies, whose epistemologies are hidden by universities. Throughout history, humanity has violently distanced itself from nature and used nature for its own benefit, aiming only for profit, which is very clear in the ‘Order and Progress’ message written on our flag. Although Western society has very well structured pillars based on Eurocentric reason, today everyone is facing an unprecedented crisis in which the survival of thinking beings is in jeopardy. Agribusiness, mining and, to a certain extent, mental monoculture – which is present in universities and doesn't allow people to get to know other philosophies – are possibly responsible for this difficult reality in which we are all living.

During the conference, Carlos Papá spoke about the importance of feeling part of nature and reconnecting with our bodies and our breathing.

"The pure truth of life is that you have to live in a place, step on the ground, smell it, feel the sun, bird, wind, rain, cold, this body. That's the real life to which you're integrated. Our life has everything, it has water, it has iron, it has glass, it has smell, it has water. We say that nature is there and our body is here. Our body is nature itself. Why do I say that? When you speak, the water sings, screams, our saliva comes out wet. Our vocal cord is always in tune so that it can speak the messages. And it plays like a flute, so that you can touch the person and they can hear and understand. And this flute, when you speak, this breath comes out of the hot water... That's where this wisdom of understanding life comes from, this is life, life is beautiful, life is marvellous from the moment you have the support of life."

Within the reflections we made and shared with each other, I felt strongly the need to talk about my concerns and my insistence with children and young people, whom I invite to learn to dialogue with plants, because they are great teachers, mentors and guides. They not only heal, but they show us the direction, the way to where we need to go.

I feel that our humanity has failed a lot with regard to the principle of what respect is. There is a very deep contradiction within humans, within all of us, and I believe that this is the great challenge that we need to learn to overcome, first by learning to walk more slowly, to listen and speak less so that we can understand and listen to what the spirits are saying. The spirits of everything: the mountains, the rocks, the wind, the rivers, which sometimes pass under our feet in cities that have been robbed. And many people don't stop to listen.  

During the profound exchanges we had, Professor Grimaldo's talk also left a mark on my heart and memory. He raised very serious questions about the many ways of thinking about the use of technology among children and young people and how this reflects on educational processes.

“It's rare to hear concepts like decolonisation and epistemic justice applied to creativity within education systems.’ 

Through his long experience, Professor Grimaldo weaved his speech very much based on everything he had experienced, including his experience with master plants. Listening to Papá and Grimaldo, I realised that there is an urgent need to listen more and understand the relationship with all forms of life.

JOY IS A VITAL FORCE – by Veronica Pinheiro

Photo: Carol Delgado

At the start of the 2024 school year, I experienced the pain of seeing fear in children's eyes. I've come across this feeling only a few times in my life, but I can sense it in the air. I looked fear in the eye for an eternal moment. That encounter was described in this diary under the title ‘This week I didn't get any notes’. There, I doubted my ability to share care. But my heart full of dreams believed in times of dance. The dance I knew how to dance used to put broad bodies and affections, irreverence and kindness, reverence and memories into motion. My grandfather, an accordion player and a brincante, taught my father, an angoleiro and a brincante, that fear should be warded off by singing. "Singing is prayer! Singing heals! Sing and evil is warded off." The song was sung with voice and body. And from singing came dancing. We sang with our whole bodies. 

When we weren't full-bodied, it was said that we were unwilling. And if we were unwilling, we wouldn't accept anything, not even our favourite food. Two things indicated that the person was in full body: singing and joy. Singing- praying-dancing was as healing as the plants in the yard. This way of being made my community committed to life and not to pain. Far from naivety and ignorance, the people of that community were aware of their pain. Joy was a political, strategic and ancestral position towards healing and the maintenance of life.

In the reading room, through workshops and art, we created sensitive dialogues in an attempt to awaken the sense of also being nature in the urbanised beings we are. While the Municipal School Professor Escragnolle Dória galaxy was expanding, the Ways of Knowing Group from Selvagem was gathering life. ‘While the universe expands, love agglutinates.’ Joy has been our most abundant agglutinator. Before the Ways of Knowing Group arrived at the school in February, Anna Dantes and Madeleine Deschamps presented a worksheet in which a party for the children would be the conclusion of the 2024 Apprenticeship Cycle. Nego Bispo says:

'Our festivities are an instrument for defending our practices, because the festivity is stronger than the Law. The State can't break the ways of life when they are involved in the festivities.’

Photos: Carol Delgado

At the school, we wrapped up the Playing Lights Up the Sun cycle with a party that reaffirmed our practices. A party where our ways of life based on cooperation, joy, abundance and respect could be celebrated. With the children, we experienced a day in which the classroom was more like the slab or the backyard of a house. Each classroom was a world full of games. A day in which joy was the general and specific objective of our planning. By playing and singing, we accomplished the day's task. I haven't got my hands on the records of the party yet. The children took the photos and will tell the story of lighting the sun. For today, I'll just share a few brief words written by happy hands.

Photo: Alice Faria

Joy is the original communication with life, capable of guiding affections and reformulating routes. Joy can deceive fear and death. Where have I seen this? I've seen it in children's eyes. And I've also read it in little notes written by teachers.

Photo: Carol Delgado

We end this page with a little note from a school teacher:

'I must congratulate you on this movement within the school. Even though the resource is external, it's there and you've been making it possible and providing opportunities for different movements in a small corner of Costa Barros.

Ahhhh how I dreamt of seeing other movements in this place that is my starting point.

Stopping, breathing, listening, touching... We've spent years competing with crime. We organise parties with toys so that the children don't have only them as parameters. We give out free cotton candy (many can't afford it and the bandits give it to them).

Studying has always been a form of confrontation.

But this time, another movement is taking place and they can't take that away from the children.

A look from another perspective.

❤️

As a former resident, as a former student and as a work colleague, I'm grateful to have been able to experience this and to witness a utopia that is possible, visible and tangible.’

Miriam Ribeiro

Teacher Miriam Ribeiro is wearing an SUN tiara created by the students during the Costume workshop.
Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

See you next page.

NOTES

¹ Caderno Selvagem – Flecha 6, Tempo e amor
https://selvagemciclo.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CADERNO49_FLECHA_6.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMBCABxXCQ&t=620s&ab_channel=SELVAGEMciclodeestudossobreavida

COLLECTIVE PRAYER ACTIVATES HEALING AND ANIMATES LIFE – by Cristine Takuá

Photo: Carlos Papá

Collective prayer activates the joy of daily life, awakening healing and guiding pathways in search of knowledge. The Living Schools are also a meeting of spiritualities. For some years now, I have been weaving networks of exchange between the Huni Kuï, Guarani and Maxakali peoples. And in this web of relationships, healing is a collective pursuit based on the lessons learned and the constant dialogue with the plants and dreams of Hamhi - Living Earth, Una Shubu Hiwea - Living School and Teko Porã - Good Living.

I am truly fascinated to see the profundity of the strengthening practices that have blossomed from this action I am coordinating. We're not just talking about theoretical educational processes, but rather seeking to activate pathways of healing for the awakening of memories and to make joy effective as a methodology of study.

Art: Fabiano Kuaray

Engaging in dialogues with plants and learning from them how to connect with ancestral knowledge is extraordinarily powerful. As I've been saying for a few years now, the bible, sugar rum and school curricula have crossed our cultures, our memories and our bodies in a very strategic way in order to silence and erase a multitude of lores and practices.

However, through dialogue with certain plants and the spiritual exchanges between the peoples who make up this collective, we are witnessing the blossoming of a new story. From chacruna to cecropia, from tobacco to soul vine, from anamu to jaracatia, we are witnessing a new beginning every day. This whole process was dreamt up, and we're witnessing it transform our territories.

Art: Delcida Maxakali

Art: Voninho Maxakali

In the studies of the Living Schools, singing is one of the fundamental particles in the transformation of very ancient stories and speeches about life and all beings. There are chants to call the spirit that is far away, chants to cure fright, chants to call the baby at the time of birth, chants to bid farewell to the spirit that has been enchanted, chants to ward off bad energies, chants to cheer up and chants to concentrate. Within this study, each person aims to develop and see the profundity of this sacred knowledge.

Knowing these codes and understanding the mysteries of beautiful speech is a teaching and learning process that every school should value. Deciphering and practising their instructions puts us in a position of knowing how to be in the places where we go in a good and beautiful way.

I salute all the masters who guide us in this world of imperfections.

I thank the plants and the enchanted beings for bringing our practices closer together and making us stronger every day.

Photo: Cristine Takuá

Art Maxakali

Art: Sueli Maxakali

PLAYING LIGHTS UP THE SUN – by Veronica Pinheiro

Playing lights up the sun. This phrase came out of Carol Delgado's mouth at the end of a meeting. After a long period of instability and insecurity that left children and teachers saddened, we got back together with volunteers and friends to think about how we could restart activities at the school. Where I come from, joy is medicine. At that moment, we wanted to return to the school to share JOY. We planned a month of activities with: a book launch; musical performances; building a bed for planting the vegetable garden; a workshop for teachers and staff; a walk; a costume workshop; photo and film making; theatre; the children's PARTY

At the same time, the Sun Cycle was being shared by Selvagem and the Ways of Knowing Group was at school lighting up the sun. And the children, just like IORI's Sun, longed for dawn again. Despair, however, managed to reach some of them before we did: one little girl has still not returned from her attempt to escape the pain. This is why I reiterate that teachers alone cannot meet all the demands assigned to the school. Educating and schooling are different processes. 

‘It takes a whole village to educate a child’. Have you ever heard this African proverb? provérbio africano? 

We urbanised beings are summoned to disconnection on a daily basis. In the city, this relationship grinding machine, people only look after their own lives and things, often looking after things more than their own lives. Disconnection and fear make life in the city increasingly segmented and ill. 

I find it curious that in the city there are spaces to play. In the city, there's room for everything. Disconnection creates a market, people pay to laugh, to be entertained and also to play. When I found out in 2022 that the Selvagem cycle of studies on life had a community, I soon signed up. And I also soon got to know this community up close. And by getting up close, I was able to connect with people, stories and territories. 

In this movement of connections, some of these people arrived with such an incredible life background that all I could think about was inviting them to play. I was raised playing what I saw adults do while playing. Joy is a very sacred medicine for Afro-diasporic communities. When we play, we activate our connection with all that makes us up. 

As usual, I spent 30 minutes explaining why it was so important that October's activities vibrate kindness and abundance of joy. I talked about the importance of playing with children. I resorted to Bantu philosophy to explain that each child is a living sun, and that walking freely on Earth is only possible if all the suns are lit. Carol summarised the talk with a smile: ‘Playing lights up the sun’. 

That sentence made everything simpler. And it was by playing that we got to this page of the diary. 

We played at storytelling: With Tania Grillo at the launch of her book Fora onde? [Out Where?] Fora onde?

We played at a music festival with John Caldwell and Anselmo Salles.

We played at building beds and planting a vegetable garden with Otávio Souza.

We played and went for a walk with Rafael Cruz, Tatiana Mello and Wagner Manoel.

We played at being birds and planting freely with Taiana Simões.

We played at creating costumes and characters with Clarissa Viegas and the Ohlograma studio.

We played with Carol Delgado to make photographs and videos, and
we played with Paula Novaes and her theatre making puppets.

We played with the Bondinho Park at the Sugarloaf Mountain.

What about the party?

Next week our Solar Party will take place.

LETTER TO VERONICA PINHEIRO – by Cristine Takuá

Good Morning, Vero

It is an immense joy to know about the walks with the children by the sea. I can only imagine how powerful and exciting it was to see their little eyes sparkling with the Sun and the waves. This experience will surely remain in their memories for the rest of their lives. You are a luminous portal, my friend, who has made it possible for these children, through the stories told and the walks taken, to feel that they can dream.

For the Guarani, the sea is a very sacred place, a portal that can transport us to Yvy marã e'ÿ, the ‘Land Without Evil’, a place where there was no hunger, disease or power disputes. A perfect place, the paradise that many wanted to reach. But to reach this place, a person had to have a spiritual elevation, a preparation of body and spirit. Some elder men and women would sometimes dream of a place and point them in the right direction, and often whole families would move in search of the place they dreamed of, which was always near the sea. The ancients had this vision in which there was a place beyond the sea and whoever concentrated spiritually would be able to pass through the portal and reach this land they dreamed of. There are stories that tell of some families who managed to reach it a long time ago, but nowadays, due to the imperfection that inhabits our being, many no longer seek to find this enchanted place.

I believe that, because of this, many Guarani tekoa are located near the sea these days. But in general, the sea is a place of contemplation, a sacred place, and most of them don't have the habit of always going to bathe in it like the non-indigenous, who go there listening to loud music and drinking alcoholic beverages, do.

That's how I learned from the Guarani to respect and admire the sea.

It would be lovely if you could come one day and we could walk together with the children and young people and have a round of songs and conversations here on the edge of Boraceia Beach. 

We will be waiting for your visit.

Here I keep my heart warmed and happy to walk with you.

A big hug!

Takuá

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

Dear Cris,

Last week I heard one of the most beautiful sentences in the world:

‘Now I have a good story to tell!’

Vinícius, 11, facing the sea, 396 metres above sea level, under the spring Sun, looked me in the eye and, smiling, said: ‘Now I have a good story to tell. When I have a child, I'm going to tell my kid that I saw the sea from the top of a mountain. I'm going to tell them ‘ behave yourself because whenever there's a trip to Sugarloaf Mountain, you'll be invited’. Although I don't behave that much. I don't really deserve it. But I'm very happy to be here today.’

To the sound of the almost midday wind, I was able to tell Vinícius that life isn't about merit, it's about sharing. And that I was very happy to share that day of good memories with him.

We left school that day to visit the Sugarloaf Mountain and, minutes after we left, terror tried to spread through the school zone. Vinícius heard what was happening in the Costa Barros neighbourhood via text message. Even though he was aware of everything, Vinícius knew that he was facing the possibility of creating his own memories.

Cris, the children are creating memories other than pain and despair! At the same time as ancestral memories are awakened, new memories are created. These are seeds of life, my friend. Seeds of a Living School that you are sowing throughout the world.

We were with children aged between 8 and 11. They were pure joy, dancing and singing the whole way round. Throughout the visit, I received notes and whispers asking me to take them to the beach. The explanation that accompanied the requests was so unquestionable that I didn't hesitate: ‘Miss V., we want to meet the sea from below too. 

We went down to the beach and I watched everyone's movements. Most of the children had never seen the sea. They took off their shoes, folded up their shorts and trousers. And, like turtles recently hatched, they ran towards the sea. They played with the salty waters, who sometimes watched the children, just like me, and sometimes played tricks on them, surprising them with fast waves. As they ran around imitating the movement of the tides, my little companions stopped to taste the sea salt in their mouths. And their mouths seemed bigger, because their smiles were wider than on other days.

As I write, my smile also widens. And with a broad smile I say goodbye. 

I think I'd love to accompany the children of the Guarani Living School on an encounter with the sea. It would be lovely to hear Papá recount memories of Nhe'ëry and to hear you sing to Nhamandu.

I hope we have good stories to tell throughout our lives on this plane.

With smiles, 

Verô

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

Greetings, dear Cris.

Your words always arrive at dawn. With them, my eyes long to be the sea and they water while dancing among your "delicating" words. I salute the guardian spirits of the beings who keep you on a good path. 

It's been raining here for days. I've heard some humans complaining about the rain; the birds, however, are so happy that they sing all day long. Along with the plants in the backyard, they remind me that the Earth can also play with the sky. With the birds I've learnt to celebrate the days. At home I've learnt to celebrate the cycles.

Listening to your talk about the consecration of Ka'a reminds me of the festivities back home. The festivities would bring the whole community together and my family would take part in all the processes of the festivities. From sewing the clothes to preparing the food; from organising the party to the day's music. At the party, some would prepare instruments and play. Everything was set up with a lot of concentration and prayers. The festivity was a reaffirmation of our way of life. My mother sewed for the whole community, my father's father and my father prepared instruments for the whole community. Prayers, blessings and food were meant for the whole community. Nowadays, around here, everything is sold. From clothes to instruments, from food to party tickets. 

We are working to awaken the memory of collective strength among the children. Amongst many things, there will also be a party. Since October 3rd, we've been celebrating the lives of the school's children through workshops, musical performances, a book launch, outings and planting activities. 

Dear friend, it seems that wind's voice has once again spoken to the residents of Complexo da Pedreira. Otávio and his boys, Davi and Marcos, have joined us. Otávio and his ‘Magic Formula for Peace’ have scared hunger away from dozens of families. Otávio's secret is only in the name of the project he leads, because he shares everything generously with everyone who approaches him. 

Remember when I said that there was a strip of green between Pedreira's complex of favelas that was taken care of by a man? I found the guardian of that swidden. In a region with the second lowest human development index in the city of Rio de Janeiro, there is a man who is full of green. Soil-plant-man suspended and hidden in the green on the edge of the asphalt. While food insecurity circulates daily among the local population, Otávio, who has reconnected with the land, takes care of the earth and is taken care of by the earth.

I continue to believe that greening, growing trees, activating and awakening memories is a job for a community. In Brazil, only 34.5 per cent of municipal schools have a green area, and the majority of schools with a green area have more grass than vegetation. Otávio, a collective man, has a daily relationship with the earth and agreed to dream and work with us and the children in the school yard. Our dream for the school is the same as Isael Maxakali's:‘Our dream is to take the land and recover it. Because it needs healing, it needs treatment. Because the earth is alive. The earth speaks, the earth looks at us and the earth cries out. (...) That's why we want to reforest.’".

Tayana and Gerrie are also in this canoe full of seeds. While Otávio teaches how to plant in delimited areas, Tayana and Gerrie plant out with the children in the backyard. As a result, we already have a vegetable garden and many sown areas around the school. In this movement to reconnect with the earth, I can see the joy in the children's eyes. The little ones, aged seven, bring extra clothes in their backpacks, waiting for the time to go to the swidden-backyard, the future little forest-school. There is also celebration in Ivone's eyes, a school employee and resident of the community, who gets emotional when she sees the fertile soil, seeds and seedlings arrive. Ivone also listened to wind's voice and, with her memories of home awakened, she has been helping us to plant and look after the backyard.

The backyard is becoming a school within the school. In it, learning lies in the relationships between humans and non-humans. We have gained a classroom under the shade of a leafy Yellow Siris. All our planting movements have been accompanied by a hummingbird that sings and observes us from many angles. 

Our days have been like this: earth in our hands and celebration in our eyes, to the sound of birds. The children are learning with their hands and are creating memories in their bodies together with the body of the earth. The celebration in the children's eyes has brought the school community together and my heart has been strengthened by this.

I bid you farewell, my dear teacher, wishing that birds tell you secrets.

And that the enchanted beings guard your paths.

Awrê.

________________

Otávio Souza, creator of the Fórmula Mágica da Paz (Magic Formula for Peace) project, started as a self-provisioning strategy for residents who became more impoverished during the 2020 pandemic. Like Otávio, many started picking up discarded food from CEASA Rio bins; however, together with his friend Matheus de Souza, he decided to focus on the land and start planting on a plot within the favela. Today, as well as learning how to look after the land, the project has helped young people gain access to an income and fresh food.

Tayana Simões, biologist and environmental educator.

Gerrie Schrik is an educator and translator, always hiking, a birdwatcher and storyteller, who loves reading and art. She lives in a small agroforest on the edge of a stream in the Piracicaba River basin. She has been guiding and technically organising the planting activities at the school.

LETTER TO VERONICA PINHEIRO – by Cristine Takuá

Dear companion in dreams,

I'm writing these words at a rainy dawn after a profound ritual of consecration of Ka'a, the mate herb. We are celebrating the beginning of Guarani's New Time - Ara Pyau. In my spiritual meditations, I've seen a lot and thought a lot about our journey, always asking for strength and protection from the enchanted beings so that our purposes can be fulfilled with beauty and so that the process can always be "delicating", as my little master Kauê says. ‘To be good and beautiful it has to be like this, delicating’.

Ka'a teaches me to focus and balance my ideas and to broaden my perceptions. My mother-in-law, Kunhã Tata Doralice, was the one who initiated me into this study. She introduced me to the sensitive path of spirituality, the wisdom from tobacco and the power of the Ka'a. For her, the yerba mate ritual was a day of celebration. A day to sing until the sunrise, without sleeping or dozing off. Paying attention to the instructions given by the Ka'a plant master is the teaching of many ancient Guarani elder women. When, around 4am, we start to pound the yerba, a strong feeling overwhelms us, as if we were turning green. 

The opy, the house of prayers, is a school for us, a classroom full of codes and secrets. Only those who allow themselves to concentrate there will be able to see its teachings. In it, children, young people and adults study together and seek healing and understanding in order to live well. 

I've had many visions and guidance from the guardian spirits of the beings who have been showing me the way to avoid sadness and discouragement in this world of so many imperfections. The school that moves me is enchanted and full of surprises, which is why I am always encouraged to read your messages and get to know your perceptions.

I was very happy to know about the good walks in the Jenipapo-Kanindé lands, on which you were walking a few days ago. Meeting people who dream like we do encourages us and nourishes our desire to continue seeking and articulating possibilities for building bridges between worlds.

Thank you for your company in this web of affection and care.

I bid you farewell with a cheerful and renewed heart after this intense night of rain that came to heal the Earth's wounds and cheer up the little plants, who are all nourished and blooming in this new Ara Pyau.

Aguyjevete, my darling!

LETTER TO VERONICA PINHEIRO – by Cristine Takuá

Good morning, Veronica 

I hope you feel well at this moment when you read my heartfelt words. Here the rain falls lightly and the singing silence of the forest is present.

We met at the Guarani Living School from 6 to 9 October to hold art and thinking creation workshops together with the Selvagem team and the young people and children from my village. We missed you a lot during those days, because your presence always enlivens and illuminates our creations, but I know you were absent because of the beautiful meeting that provided you with enchanting encounters in Ceará. We continue to talk about children, the need to listen carefully and to allow ourselves to keep dreaming. 

In the days we've been here, we've concentrated around the fire on a long night of singing and studying; we've started plastering the walls of the study house, the research classroom in the forest, with clay; we've bathed in the waterfall at dawn and produced some art.

Photos: Alice Faria (left and center) e Tania Grillo (right)

After listening to Carlos Papa's ancient narratives, the young people created a canvas called Ara Pyau, the new Guarani time, a moment that we are now experiencing with the arrival of Tupã kuery, the thunders that announced the arrival of the new time. The Selvagem team and I focused on the map of São Paulo's Nhe'ery, the land of Piratininga, where Parana Pines and Queen Palms lived. I'm still writing down the names of places, rivers and streets and their meanings in the language. Many people walk through São Paulo, speak Tupi Guarani and don't even know they're speaking it. Ibirapuera, Anhanguera, Tucuruvi, Jacui Carandiru, Tamanduateí, Tietê, Guayanazes, Tatuapé, and so many other names that, in their meanings, portray the landscape of the Nhe'ery that has been hidden by the concrete cities.

I'm dreaming of organising another workshop soon so that you can be with us and we can organise a canvas with the children, about children's thoughts. I've become increasingly fascinated by the truth of children, their mysteries and surprises. 

Children teach through playing and put us to observe the wonders of life in the smallest things. Every day is children's day, they are seeds. It is for them that Nhamandu Mirim, the Sun God, rises every morning to generate life, to warm us and to enlighten us.

This morning I salute the Sun, the children and their enlightened strength, my friend Verô.

Photos: Carlos Papá (left) e Tania Grillo (right)

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

Jenipapo-Kanindé children's choir, at Tapera das Artes

My dear teacher, 

I bring good news from the Jenipapo-Kanindé lands. On the banks of the Enchanted Lagoon I personally met Viviane and Adelsin, and yes, they are very special. The Good Waters brought us here. Here, dreams and life coexist. The children sing, the young people dream and the teachers smile.  

Viviane and Adelsin told me about the Casinhas de Cultura [Culture Little Houses] and how they got to know Tapera das Artes, a ‘School of Life’ that, through music and the arts, promotes enchantment and significant changes in children's lives.

We spent two days meeting teachers, educators, artists and children. There were many of us, but at times I had the feeling that we were one. Joy and love are forces that truly move the present day, while at the same time they heal the yesterday and prepare the morrow. Here I have witnessed beautiful movements of confluence and heard many stories of memories awakening. From lace to singing, ceramics to the bamboo fife, the strengthening of the territory dialogues directly with intergenerational relations. 

Here I've shared a little of our journey and told you about how we've been paddling the canoe together with Selvagem Cycle. I talked about the Living Schools and that I only came because you built the path. I'm very moved by the connections that have been made. I'm coming back stronger and believing that dialogue with teachers and schools is a possible path on this journey of re-enchantment. School education is often a process of docilising bodies and inhibiting freedom of thought. But here in Aquiraz I have met teachers from the land, masters who have neither lost their connection with the territory nor with natural life. We're on the second day of the meeting and the same 400 teachers from yesterday are here today to think about how not to let the curriculum take away children's relationship of love towards life. 

The Pacoti River and the Catú River were also brought into the conversation. Because we have lost our connection with nature, we are forced to outsource natural learning relationships. The children of Aquiraz have less and less connection with the rivers, and many of them now only learn to swim if their families have money to pay for swimming lessons. What used to be a relationship between child and river, a natural learning relationship, is now a commercial relationship between student and swimming instructor. It was lovely to hear that the teachers in Aquiraz acknowledge that the waters are teachers.

It's beautiful to know that there are Living Schools and Schools of Life; culture points and culture houses; teachers who dream and dreamers who accomplish things. It's so beautiful to feel that we can continue confluencing like the rivers of Aquiraz. As my teacher, Nego Bispo, used to say: ‘A river doesn't stop being a river because it confluences with another river; on the contrary, it turns into itself plus other rivers, it becomes stronger.

I leave these Jenipapo-Kanindé lands in a spiritful state and strengthened by the songs of the Jenipapo-Kanindé children. Surrounded by the sound of the children's singing, Silvia's blessings and ceramic whistles made at Tapera das Artes, I say goodbye. 

See you on Saturday, my teacher.

From left to right: Veronica Pinheiro, Viviane Fontes, Adelsin, Lucilene Silva

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

I salute your existence, 

I thank the Guardians who watch over you along the way.

I always read your words at dawn, together with the rising sun. It's almost a rite. I've been focussed like the Ant teachers, carrying what is necessary, trusting the path and those who have walked ahead. Your words are like Mrs Cassiana's hugs and prayers: they welcome me and strengthen me. When I was a child, my feet were turned inwards. Dona Cassiana prayed over my feet and ankles so that they would grow strong and not falter along the way. I want you to know, my friend, that my feet and ankles falter less on the way since you arrived.

The path is made by walking, and along the path that was made, I have met people who are willing to think about and build possible futures. I think we learn and teach continuously, so everyone needs to be involved in the learning process, not just teachers, parents, educators and schools. What is an architect teaching when he builds a school? What is a doctor teaching when he treats a person without looking them in the eye and prescribes medication without examining them? What is a restaurant teaching when it asks a customer to leave because their appearance is frightening other customers?

Life happens in a web of continuous relationships. And humans have chosen to relate to life in a way that causes a lot of frustration and sadness. 

My master Nego Bispo used to say: ‘I'm not a human being, I'm a quilombola. I live by being involved and by sharing. I coexist with snakes, rats, bats, frogs, fish, flowers, trees and stones. Humans don't even live with themselves.’

Since I can wish not to be human, I can also live in abundant relationship with everything that exists. And two forces encourage me in this process: joy and enchantment. Contrary to what some people may think, a joyful and enchanted person is not an innocent or alienated person. A joyful and enchanted person is a person immune to the harm caused by the process of civilisation. That's why I play with children, read to them and tell them stories; I want them to be happy. In the spaces between the harshness implanted by the monoculture of thought, we are sowing a living school, just like the little ants that take seeds and stick them in the cracks of tree branches. This plastered civilisation system is full of cracks, and if we can't bring it down at once, we can weaken it. And the best way to weaken the monoculture of thought is to strengthen our territories and all the life that inhabits them. Let's sow cosmological schools, with lots of organic, green and loving narratives.

I dream and work so that, in the next Ways of Knowing cycles, more people will be encouraged to be ant-people. Many people talk about their relationship with life and don't even relate to other humans. Ways of Knowing are something you experience, aren't they? I dream of everyone making a real commitment to the happiness of the children of our country and the world. The teacher ants teach us about cooperation: they work and organise collectively, putting their intelligence and effort towards the benefit of the collective. I dream of the days when being an ant will be enough for many people. 

A little ant hug,

Veronica

LETTER TO VERONICA PINHEIRO – by Cristine Takuá

Greetings, Veronica, 

On this sunny morning, I salute your existence and our struggles, dreams and longings, which span throughout many generations. In the tracks of our grandmothers, we keep aiming to re-enchant this world through our work, this Ways of Knowing cycle which I glimpse and see as a colourful, illuminated little canoe that invites children, young people and all beings to wake up, awakening their deepest memories.

Over the last few months, sharing the Learning Diaries with you, I've learnt a lot from your journeys and reflections. I, here in my Tekoa, and you, in the little school where you work, have been dreaming of a more enchanted future for all children. This possibility of transformation that living schools yearn for is so marvellous that today some researchers, teachers and curious people are trying to get closer to it. They are trying to understand what this proposal of breaking the bubble of mental monoculture in educational processes is all about.

The elders have been trying for many generations to strengthen their territories, their practices, through narratives and rituals. I always find myself reflecting on this discourse about the end of the world that aims to block and halt our dreams. Every day I feel more encouraged to keep rowing against the tide and to keep treading slowly, sowing possibilities of metamorphosis in our relationships through micro-politics.

I thank you 

I honour you

And I reaffirm my immense joy in rowing together with you.

And with the intention of never stopping dreaming, I want to ask you: what are your dreams for our Ways of Knowing cycle? What motivates and encourages you the most at the moment?

We carry on, my dear, like little ants working and working...

Cooperating, transforming...

Sowing and dreaming...

LETTER TO VERONICA PINHEIRO – by Cristine Takuá

Greetings, dear Verô.

I'm writing to you on a rainy day, listening to the birds singing happily, but with my thoughts far away, feeling the mourning I'm in for recent losses and for my relatives, plants and animals, who have been burnt by the fire that never ceases in this Brazil of ours, where many humans exalt merchandise above all lives.

Meeting you during these times on this journey that we're now taking together has encouraged me not to stop believing. Your sensitivity and enchantment with children made me not feel alone in my dreams and aspirations. I would like to thank you for your existence and your strength.

I grew up without knowing my grandmothers and this has always caused me a deep emptiness, an absence, a lack of someone to give me guidance. As a child, whenever I went to sleep, I prayed to dream about them, to know what they were like, to receive some teaching even if it was in a dream. At times, I had the privilege of meeting them in my dreams and those were very important moments for me. But I still felt that absence. 

Life has gifted me with some people-grandmothers and plant-grandmothers. My children's grandmother, who was my mother-in-law, was called Kunhã Tatá. She was a real grandmother to me, guiding me, teaching me and showing me paths. 

At the age of 24, I met a sacred medicine that showed me many paths and made me look inside myself. This medicine, made from a vine and a leaf, became my teacher, and I began to study with her. Over the years, she showed me my grandmothers and began to teach me a sacred knowledge that one of my grandmothers, my father's mother, was a master of: the art of midwifery. And so this medicine showed me how little children are born. At first I didn't understand why she was showing me this, but a little while later I did, when I had the honour of performing my first birth, and then another and another... I'm still learning…

The Parana Pine, this ancient being, once introduced herself to me as my grandmother. She told me, during a long night of spiritual concentration, that I no longer needed to feel the absence that had accompanied me throughout my childhood, because she was a grandmother to me.

Time is the great master of life. Knowing how to respect and understand its delicacies is a lesson for those who allow themselves to be patient. Care and affection go hand in hand in this process of seeking understanding. And little by little, they reveal themselves and direct us to where we want to go.

It's been very important for me to accompany your steps, to read your thoughts and concerns, to be able to learn from you and share what I feel, do and think. Together we will continue to paddle this little canoe that dreams of transforming, sowing and activating/animating minds and hearts.

I am deeply grateful to have the privilege of walking together in this savage purpose of conceiving life, in a world where the excess of information and human robotisation deliriously continue to numb minds, sicken bodies and silence dreams.

I'm ending this letter on a day of much concentration, after having spent the whole night in the Opy, the large classroom of the Guarani Living School. Between prayers and meditations, I dawned feeling the roosters calling the Sun, the birds celebrating the Sun's shining and the little children waking up happily after a long night of dreams shared by the light and magic of the fire.

We are seeds, my sister, and we will continue together with each new sunrise.

I greet your existence and the ones that came before us.

Artwork: Jeisson Castillo

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

Hello, dear Cris.

Life around here has become much happier since I met you. Having you around on this journey is a great gift.

We're doing well at school. It feels like we've entered a new cycle, a time of life. Even though we're tired, we're happier than we were at the beginning of the year. I've spent the last few days thinking about the words of teacher Creuza Krahô about safeguards and time. These words arrived at the exact moment when I recognised that I need to reconnect, wisely, with the safeguarding of times and with Time. 

In these movements of awakening memories, my memories and the memories of my people weave deep dialogues with me and with the children. 

The most sacred place I've found in recent times is among the children. The intersection of time happens to them. 

At home, Time has a name and a body: Iroko. Time is strength. Iroko is the very representation of the dimension of time, little known to living and dead beings, born or yet to be born. Guardian of ancestry, Iroko governs time and strengthens the links between the past and the present. Iroko is the first tree ever planted on Earth. Mrs Cassiana, the old woman who prayed over me as a child, used to say that the tree is the body of time. I've been thinking about time and trees.

There are hardly any trees on the route from my house to the school. The trees have been removed and, as a result, we no longer see the body of time. And if we don't see it, we start to forget it. By forgetting, we lose the caring relationship with it. 

I met Xamoi Alcindo Wherá Tupã through you. He used to claim that we had unlearned to listen to the trees. In this mail, I want to introduce you to the trees that safeguard me on my way to school. I've already talked about the dangers and precariousness in other texts; I want to talk about the trees. 

When you reach the Costa Barros milestone, next to the railway line, you'll see the greenest corner of the entire route. This green corner is a hillside inhabited by a few people, lots of trees, birds and possums. There is a yard at the top, visible to everyone that passes by, full of fruit trees, and a young avocado tree guards its entrance. 

Following the Botafogo road towards the underground, my friend, Water Chestnut and Oiti trees will accompany you along a beautiful green corridor. There will be hazards on the pavement, things that might scare your eyes, but try to look at the trees. You'll pass fragrant Brazilian Pepper trees, Lead trees and young and mature Indian-Almond trees. When you see an Elder Ficus Gomelleira on your left, smile at her, she will be happy to see you. For the axé people, the Gomelleira is Iroko, who makes the bridge between Ayê, the earth, and Orum, the sky. She is the body-tree of time.

When you see the tree, look to the right and go round the corner surrounded by fragrant Boldos. The Cotton Tree will welcome you at the school gate. The children and I will be there. 

May you come in a good moment.

We await your arrival with clay in our hands and green in our eyes,

Verô

WHICH CODES DO WE DECIPHER? – by Cristine Takuá

      Photo: Cris Takuá

Nature gives meaning to life and, in nature, everything has its balance. It's like an immense web where everything is interconnected, a living organism. Nature's power lies in directing us, showing us the path of light to follow in search of wisdom. Every sign we receive has a meaning for our lives. The song of a bird can indicate something, the thunder that passes by is a sign that something is about to happen, the ants in the middle of the path, the shapes of the clouds, the direction of the wind, in short, many omens are transmitted to us by the signs of nature, who, with delicacy and wisdom, guides us and teaches us how to live well, which in Guarani is called: Teko Porã. It's a philosophical, political, social and spiritual concept that precisely expresses this great web, where we live in harmony and with respect.

Photo: Carlos Papá

Carlos Papá says that, from an early age, the Guarani learn the codes for walking and living in the forest.

“‘I used to walk through the forests so I could decipher the codes, because every day when you pass through the same forest, even if it's a place you've been to before, it's already changed. In this place you passed there were no ants, then the next day you pass by and there are ants or a beetle. So you have to analyse... Landscapes change, don't they? 

For example: you make a painting, you paint a tree, then you think like this: ‘I think there's a caterpillar missing on the leaf. I think I'll make a caterpillar on the leaf. But I'm only going to do it tomorrow, today it won't work because I'm tired or sleepy, so I'm going to paint the caterpillar tomorrow. Or a butterfly flying'. But you leave everything for the next day. 

Photo: Carlos Papá

It's the same with nature. When you're in a place, you remain silent. Perhaps there are no birds or water flowing. Then you look at it, take a good look, memorise exactly how it was. Then you go home and the next day, or three or four days later, you go back to the same place again and analyse everything. It's different, because maybe it rained or now there's a bird, a toucan or a cricket. Or maybe there's a butterfly flying, or a butterfly missing. So the landscape has changed, it's not the same.

I used to make this reading: why has it changed? And the sunlight that hit it on the day I was looking at it. The light that hit it was bright. After three days, the light wasn't the same, because the sun was a little hidden, the clouds were low. So things change. And then you see the cricket over there on a date, or there. You look at the cricket and memorise that time in that way. Then, the next day, you go back there again: the cricket is no longer there and the weather is marvellous, there's good weather. But the cricket is no longer there. 

So I started to notice the codes of the things that were there. I mean, if you see bad weather, the cricket is standing there the other way round, in the opposite direction, like this or like that, in your direction. These are the codes you have to notice if the weather is going to change tomorrow, if it's going to be the same, if it's going to be cold or if it's going to rain. So the cricket is like a compass that indicates something... So you'll keep this in your memory: when the cricket is like this, it's because the weather is going to be good the next day. So the cricket is getting ready to go up, because tomorrow there will be good weather and that's its way of eating a new leaf. So the cricket is going. Now, if the cricket is like that, it's because it's going to be very cold the next day and it is going to a place that is not on the ground nor up high, but where there is less cold air current. So the cricket is looking for a place to hide, so that there's less air flow, because above there's a lot of cold air flow as well as below, because below the ground is very cold. So it's kind of in the middle, so that there's no cold draft. 

So we have to be aware of all this, deciphering the codes to know how to walk and live well.’

Photo: Cris Takuá

Little by little we grow up and learn the codes that reveal the paths we will follow. However, at school we are instructed to learn signs and codes that are disconnected from life. A bunch of theories about letters and numbers that end up distancing us from the real and natural meaning of this coexistence, which is ancestral to us within the memory that lives inside us. 

Which codes are we able to decipher today? Who is able to understand the messages brought by the Tupã, gods of thunder? Who understands the signals of the Jataí, the sensitive stingless little bees native to the Nhe'ëry? Who dialogues with the ants when they are on a long line carrying leaves, often larger than themselves, towards a safe place? Who feels and observes the movement of the clouds? The blowing of the winds? The waves of the sea that come and go in their very unique balance?

I feel that it is necessary to reconnect with these signs of wildlife, which show us the exact meaning of our existence. Centuries and centuries of human reason have ignored the wisdom of the forest codes. 

I invite everyone to become savage, to allow themselves to feel, listen and see these signs that pulsate around us every day.

Photo: Carlos Papá

THE WISDOM OF AFRICAN SYMBOLS – by Veronica Pinheiro

Adinkras: painting workshop and creation of co-operation games

‘Those who know where they came from don't get lost on the way’. Every time my father took me out, he repeated this proverb. He trained me to pay attention to the paths. ‘Don't get distracted on the way.’ When we arrived at the place we wanted to go, I would be asked what I had seen and if I knew how to get back. When I mentioned the colour of a wall or that I'd seen a popcorn seller, my father would tell me that I should pay attention to permanent things, like a big tree or a grocery store. I should also pay attention to the shape of the wall, the design of the grilles and not just the colours, because the colours could change and the popcorn man might not be there when I got back.

Photos: Veronica Pinheiro

My grandmother was born free, in 1910. But my grandmother's mother was born at a time when people were sold as goods in Brazil. Our stories were an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. Every piece of information was precious: prayers, rites, circles, recipes. My father knew that it was important to look at the grilles, and he and I thought that the reason was that hardly anyone changed the façades because the ironwork on the façades was too expensive. My father and I missed some important information when looking at the grilles: they could contain African symbols with important messages. Many Africans who came to Brazil were expert blacksmiths. The enslaved Africans brought knowledge and technologies with them. Among this knowledge was the expertise of West African iron metallurgy, which had a significant influence on the social and economic relations of this population during the diaspora. Nobody tells that to the children!

The technologies carried on the body were articulated with sacred memories of the relationship with life. Iron, for example, was not a natural resource, but a resource guarded by Gu, a very ancient ancestor. Gu, the blacksmith god, taught men how to forge iron. Gu's teachings expanded the ways in which the Fon people, from the kingdom of Dahomey in Benin, related to the earth and to life. In Brazil, Gu appears as Ogum - representative of courage, technology, hard work, hunting, agriculture, iron and, if necessary, war. The knowledge and the relationship with metallurgy were organic, sacred and structuring of a cosmology. However, Euro-colonialism, which has never respected the life and existence of beings, in addition to kidnapping and enslaving African people, saw this relationship as another way of enriching and hurting the Earth with the extraction of gold. 

Go around… Go around… Go around, my Saint Anthony.

I am running around to get to talk about the wisdom of the symbols contained in the Adinkras, a graphic communication brought from Ghana. While I write, I realise how much I go around when talking about a subject. I don't know how it works for children. But I haven't learnt to be any different yet. 

The territory we know today as Ghana was a region known as the Gold Coast (Togo, Nigeria, Benin and Ghana). The enslaved Africans brought from this region belonged to the Fanti, Ashanti, Ewe, Fon, Egbe, Youruba and Igbo peoples. They became known in Brazil as ‘negros de mina’, black people from the mines. They were men of such great wisdom and knowledge that they communicated with their relatives through the symbols on the façades of their houses and on pieces made from iron. To this day we find Adinkra symbols on door and window grilles in Rio de Janeiro. Besides being an aesthetic choice made by the blacksmiths, the symbols communicated that no one was alone on the path. ‘Pay attention to the path.’

Photos: Veronica Pinheiro

In the workshop on painting and creating collaborative games, I invited the children to pay attention to the grilles. They are not allowed to photograph the territory, for security reasons. But I photographed some gates from the street where I live, showed them and they told me that they saw these symbols on the way. I told them that the symbols communicate memories of an ancient people who gave rise to our people. We read the book Quanto de África tem no dia de Alguém. We re-read Os tesouros de Monifa. And I invited them to notice the many messages of life that surround us. Life communicates all the time, it's just that we have lost the ability to understand. But if we have lost it, we can learn again.

Photos: Veronica Pinheiro

Curiously, the Adinkra that the children identified with the most is Sankofa. Curiously, Sankofa is the most present symbol on the grilles of doors and windows. The bird looking back is also graphically represented by shapes that resemble the representation of the heart. Sankofa summarises the idea of the ancestral future. The proverb that accompanies it says: ‘It's never too late to go back and pick what was left behind’. Sankofa symbolises the wisdom of learning from the past in order to build the future. And this message has been on the path ever since the blacksmith brothers arrived in Brazil. 

‘Pay attention to the path. You need to know how to get back,’ my father used to say. 

Regular school teaches us to look ahead, to the future. But the so-called future of humanity has scared the children. So I invite my little companions to look to the past. Not the past of slavery. But the cosmological past, which insists on communicating with us. The past of the technology of engagement with life.  

I remembered Cris Takuá, my teacher, and her teachings. I think we're awakening memories here.

SCHOOL LIVES IN ME – by Cristine Takuá

Photo: Cris Takuá

In the last week, some very strong and deeply reflective events have happened on my journey.

Two and a half years ago, I left the state school in my community because I felt like a foreign body in the midst of order, obedience, discipline, curriculum and so many prisons that were disturbing my dreams. When I left, the Living Schools blossomed, this powerful and encouraging seed that I have been coordinating together with Carlos Papá, Sueli and Isael Maxakali, Dua Busë and Netë Huni Kuin, Francy and Francisco Baniwa and João Paulo Tukano and Carla Wisu.

Paddling this little canoe of awakening of memories with affection and care, I have come to realise how much ‘school’, this complex being full of possibilities, continues to go through me and inspire my steps in life.

By stimulating dialogue and the exchange of experiences, a few days ago at the Guarani Living School I experienced a visit from the fifth grade class of my community's nursery school, Kauê's class.

Why do kids ask so many questions?

Photo: Cris Takuá

We welcomed the children and their teacher who, with great curiosity, came to find out more about healing plants. Papa and I took them for a walk and to collect some of the plants used in traditional Guarani medicine. Then we talked about each one. Papá, joking but being serious, asked them the names of the plants. Some knew the name in Guarani, others the name in Portuguese. And so Papa went on to explain the plants one by one, their names and their qualities, how and for what they are used.

It was a very interesting activity and the children kept asking questions about the plants, their uses and also about our bodies and times of seclusion, diet and mourning. 

One girl asked: ‘Why do we have to cut our hair when we get our first period?’. From this question, a whole conversation arose about the time of seclusion and the importance of this moment of retreat for the girl who is becoming a woman. These teachings are very sacred and precious for life.

Photo: Djeguaka

It was very beautiful and touching to see the children asking questions, so excited and attentive, listening to this sensitive and necessary knowledge.

Then we went to visit the little bees and talked about the importance of beeswax for the rituals of naming the little children, which happen at the beginning of every year.

Photo: Cris Takuá

The day after this meeting, we had an appointment in Santos to attend a class at the Intercultural Indigenous Degree programme, which is training indigenous teachers from São Paulo State. That day we worked on activities related to indigenous action and knowledge at school. The theme was educational games. Each group presented their research and the possibilities of bringing these games to the children in the classroom. The meeting with the 40 teachers, Unifesp undergraduate students, was beautiful and joyful.

Photo: Carlos Papá

But that day, before leaving for Santos, Papa felt inspired to go and visit his godmother Rete, who gave birth to him 54 years ago. So there we went, to another community three and a half hours from our house. It was a beautiful meeting, full of memories. She said she had been waiting for him, she had a feeling he was coming. She told us many stories about childbirth, about her life and her journeys as a woman, a praying healer and a midwife. 

Photo: Djeguaka

The following day, after these learning walks, we hosted a meeting for teachers who work at the school here in our community. There were ten teachers: three from the initial years and seven from the final years of high school. This meeting was to discuss the resumption of the ‘Indigenous Knowledge at School Action’, for the production of bilingual teaching materials. Ten years ago, I had coordinated this action when I was at the state school, but few teachers took part; Carlos Papá was the master of knowledge, who gave guidance on narratives, Guarani language and traditional knowledge.

This meeting was a moment of profound reflection for me, because I realised that I left school, but the school didn't leave me and it continues to motivate me to encourage others not to give up dreaming and fighting for their ideals.

That same day we received news of the passing of a great master and teacher, who got enchanted. Xamoi Alcindo Wherá Tupã was a guardian of fire, a praying man and a connoisseur of words and profound knowledge. We spoke about him to the group of teachers.

We ended the day at the Opy, the real school, praying, singing and meditating until dawn.

And so we continue to animate and row this little transformation canoe, the Living Schools.....

Photo taken from the documentary Whera Tupã e o Fogo Sagrado [‘Whera Tupã and the Sacred Fire].

THE BEAUTY OF CHILDREN'S ANSWERS – by Veronica Pinheiro

Ọkàn ríran ju ojú lọ
The heart can see much deeper than the eyes

Education happens in everyday relationships, beyond the walls of the school. In the classroom, gestures, attitudes, tone of voice and gaze are just as important, if not more so, than curriculum content. The information contained in gestures educates, welcomes and gives hope. The curriculum educates for a hypothetical, future life, it prepares for tests that perhaps one day a student will take. Gestures educate for the present, dilating the complexity of the record that seeks to understand everything that happens in the environment and in the body itself, through relationships. Lydia Hortélio says, and I agree:

‘No-one was born to take entrance exams. We were born to be people, to express ourselves fully, freely, with all the talents that human beings have.’ 

In times of emergency, I think about how to align gestures and content. In times of emergency, how can we make regular schools a place where children and teachers can be people, expressing themselves fully and freely? My dear master Nego Bispo used to say that, in this war of denominations, we need to learn the game of countering colonial words as a way of weakening them. Weaken what they have said about us and look for the understanding and the depth of who we are in our ancestry. The school as a place where denominations are taught separates those who teach from those who learn, as if a 'discente' (student) could only be a pupil and a 'docente' (teacher) could only be a tutor. 

The term ‘discente’, in Portuguese, has its origins in Latin, deriving from the term ‘discens’, which is the present participle of the verb ‘discere’, meaning ‘to learn’. And ‘docente’ comes from the Latin ‘docens’, which is the present participle of the verb ‘docere’, meaning ‘to teach’. In the dynamics of everyday life, we are sharing people. Teaching and learning is a relationship of life. Sharing is much more than playing social roles: there is no immobility in sharing relationships. We continually teach and learn from each other. As the months go by, the relationship with the children in the Pedreira favela shows me that the beauty of the children's answers is restructuring the way I relate to them and to life. The children hold me in their short arms with little letters, drawings and spoken words. They teach me how to breathe in the midst of the capitalist smoke that suffocates life. 

‘Miss V., your earrings are cool’.

‘Some people think my earrings are weird.’

‘Grown-ups, right? We think they're beautiful. They have messages, right?’

'All her earrings have a message. The nature ones, the village ones, the shell ones.’

‘Are you seriously looking at my earrings? And how do you know they have a message?’

‘Because we felt it.’

‘I didn't feel anything,’ said Alessandro. ‘It's just a leaf.’

‘Yes. It's aya.’

Because of my earrings, this week we talked about Adinkras. Adinkras, graphic symbols originating from the Akan culture in Ghana, are an example of how forms of communication and recording don't have to be subject to conventional written language. These symbols hold philosophies, memories and stories, functioning as a type of visual writing full of knowledge and cultural identity. Our imagination, built by colonialist education, has conditioned us to think that orality was the only pillar of record for the transmission of knowledge in Africa, but it wasn't. There are many different types of African and Amerindian writing. 

The Adinkras are written to be read with the heart and not with the eyes. The suffix ‘kra’ is translated as soul. These symbols are related to communication with ancestors. Adinkra is like a farewell to the soul. The term ‘dinkra’ means ‘to say goodbye’ or ‘to bid farewell’. In it, those who remain tell those who have gone that they can go in peace, because they have learnt the teachings from the heart and know what to do to keep going. ‘Aya’ is an Adinkra symbol that represents a fern leaf. The word also means ‘I'm not afraid of you’. It symbolises resistance, physical strength. It is associated with the idea of overcoming difficulties and adapting to adversity. 

‘Miss V., to whom are you saying you're not afraid?'

‘I didn't get it.'

‘Aya means I'm not afraid of you. Who's “you”? Who are you not afraid of? And do you have to wear the earring to say you're not afraid?’

I didn't dare answer at first. After a pause, Ester continued:

‘Miss V., everyone is afraid, but when you grow up, it'll pass!’

CECROPIA, MAGICAL FIBRE AND MOTHER OF TIME – by Cristine Takuá

Drawing: Israel Maxakali

The Guarani people call the cecropia amba’y, the Maxakali people tuthi: a magical plant and very sacred to many peoples. For days now I've been immersed in their charms, observing their forms, their knowledge and their powers. A few days ago we were visited by the coordinators of the Maxakali Living School, Isael and Sueli, along with Aunt Juraci and her grandchildren. We walked through the forest, collected cecropia saplings and extracted their fibre, which, as well as being a raw material for weaving, is also used in spiritual ceremonies. The Maxakali women always carry a bundle of cecropia threads to bless their children if they feel any physical or spiritual discomfort.

Sueli Maxakali said that the cecropia, tuthi, is the mother fibre because it is magical and can turn women into anacondas. The cecropia can also produce bees, hunt and weave paths that reach the celestial villages. The women's relationship with this spirit plant is very strong, and their knowledge has been passed down for generations through chants. When we went into the forest to cut and remove their fibres, there was a whole preparation with songs and permission requests to start the work. Not only when the fibre was extracted, but at every stage of production: when scraping, removing the thread, drying, winding the yarn with saliva - there is a relationship and a connection with the spirit-people, the yãmĩyxop. And through these relationships with these mother trees in each interwoven thread, ancestral history and memories are woven through the chants.

Photos: Carlos Papá

There is a narrative that tells how, by swallowing a cecropia thread made by her mother, an ancestral woman was transformed into an anaconda. This is the story of Kãyãtut, the woman who became a ‘mother snake’ or ‘big snake’ by swallowing a cecropia thread. She took revenge on her husband who refused to look after her during her menstrual period. Instead of looking after his wife and preparing her food, he preferred to go hunting tapirs. The wife, enraged, asked her mother to make a very thick and long cecropia thread and waded into the forest. In the forest, she stuck the thread into her body, making it go in through her anus and out through her mouth. She tied the upper end to a tree and stretched it out until she turned herself into an anaconda. When she turned into a snake, the woman attracted her husband by imitating the voice of the tapirs and, when he reached her, she surrounded, trapped and swallowed him. She then submerged in the deep waters of a lagoon. When she came out of the water, her husband, still alive inside her, cut the skin of her belly with a shard of stone and flew out, for he had turned into a bird. The snake woman, deeply wounded, flailed against the trees until she died.

Photo: Cris Takuá

Many are the narratives that tell of the cecropia as part of ancient memories. Both humans and animals, such as birds, ants and sloths, honour and exalt its existence.

Today, when I was getting ready to finish this week's diary, first thing in the morning I came across a sloth in the forest, chilling out. I remembered Sueli and Isael and all my Maxakali relatives, who dream of the forest being alive again. I sent him a photo.

Straight away Isael answered me by singing to the sloth, and so I did too.

I listened to Isael's prayer-song with the sloth, who loves the cecropias so much and came early to say hello and brighten up our dawn....

A little while later, Isael sent me a drawing he'd made of the cecropia and the sloth.

And so we keep on with our connections in the Living Schools, singing, dreaming and walking slowly....

Photo: Cris Takuá

SOWING WORDS – by Veronica Pinheiro

Seed paper workshop, poetry and seed planting
Talk about dreams and mouths that devour the world

Photo: Wagner Lúcio

"Miss V., is arugula a plant or a tree?"

"Arugula is an edible plant. Do you want to plant arugula seeds?"

"Yes, I do. Arugula is a beautiful name. It has a woman's name. Like Ursula. But it starts with an ‘A’ for ‘ Amanda’ and for ‘Adele’."

"Indeed! Arugula is a beautiful name. Do you want to plant the arugula seed because you want to plant the word ‘Arugula’?"

"No. I want to plant the word 'Saudade' [Longing] with an 's' for 'Sofia'. But I don't want a tree. I want the word ‘saudade’ to be just a little plant."

Alice and I have this feeling of saudade, of longing. She cries every day at the end of class because she's afraid of being forgotten at school. She arrives smiling. She eats lunch. She plays. Studies. Chats. But when the carers start arriving at 5pm and the children are called by their names to leave the school, Alice cries. Every day, the girl justifies herself as if she's bothering us. Alice's crying doesn't bother anyone. The other children at school, teachers, staff and headmistresses embrace Alice and her tears. She cries with saudade. Alice's mum enchanted herself last year. The girl is afraid of being lonely. 

Alice and I have a secret: she can pick any of my toys and take them home whenever she wants to distract herself and laugh out loud with her eyes closed. Alice has small eyes and when she laughs it's almost impossible to see her eyes. Alice's eyes speak more than her mouth. However, on seed planting day she decided to talk. And talk a lot.

The workshop ‘Sowing Words’ took place over four meetings. We spent a month collecting all the discarded sheets of paper from the school in a box in the reading room. At the first meeting, we shared with the children the stories of the trees that are chewed up by tree-eating mouths to turn into paper. In Brazil, the trees most commonly used for paper production are eucalyptus and pinus. These trees are fast-growing. Why do they need fast-growing trees? The children answer:

"Because we use too much paper and the factory is in a hurry." Arthur, 8 years old.

All trees have a substance called cellulose in their cells – paper is produced from cellulose pulp. Monoculture plantations of these two trees have been taking over the Brazilian countryside. Pinus and eucalyptus are considered exotic trees because they are not native to Brazil, that is, they are not part of the biome in which they are planted. Those who represent companies call monoculture a ‘planted forest’. This is the information that generally and officially reaches schools. On the other hand, environmentalists and organisations fighting for land prefer to call the plantations a ‘green desert’ and reaffirm that monocultures cannot be considered ‘forests’ due to the small biodiversity within them. In addition, traditional communities and small farmers, based on their direct relationship with the land, defend the perspective that plantations of these species on an industrial scale can generate drastic hydrological impacts. Monocultures of eucalyptus and pinus contribute to reducing the flow of rivers and streams.

This conversation began with a piece of paper taken out of the rubbish bin. The paper went back to the notebook, the shop, the factory, the planted tree. We ended the first meeting wondering if we needed that much paper. 

The school we know is a Western invention that defends specific interests. The school model practised is inconsistent with the discourse of preservation and care for nature that we superficially try to apply. Would a paperless school be possible? If the schools made their own paper, would they waste so many sheets? As a child, I used to leave the glass of milk almost half full. My mum used to say that I only did that because I didn't realise how much work it was to put milk in the glass. 

Photo: Sabrina Amarante

At the second meeting, we began to prepare the discarded paper to be blended. The paper was shredded by the children and soaked in water for 24 hours. ‘Auntie, aren't we going to plant today?’ I spent the whole day answering this question. In general, we talk about how something is done and move on to a concluding activity. Skipping steps gives children the impression that we humans don't need to wait. To liquefy the paper, we have to wait for the next meeting. Between meetings, Alice became more interested in the idea of planting seed paper.

We follow the steps for paper preparation. Blending, moulding, adding seeds, drying. The mainstream school has become the place where we learn with our eyes and ears. The rest of the body is almost always left out of the process. The body produces complex thoughts and memories. Letting the body build responses to challenges without telling a child all the time what they need to do is allowing them to trust themselves. Some leaves got too thick and didn't dry well. One group of children didn't divide the amount of seed properly, which resulted in seed paper without seeds. When making this paper, you can choose the seeds of any plants you wish; we had seeds of guava, arugula, watercress, daisies, carrots, tomatoes and parsley.

After it's done, you can use the seed paper for invitations, stationery, gifts, biodegradable confetti, business cards... At school, with the children, we wrote poetry, dreams and beautiful words with earth inks on the paper. The soil from the school yard and the Costa Barros ravines is the same as the paint used in our drawings. We distributed the seed paper among the children. Most of them wrote ‘PEACE for pedreira’. I read the words forest, love and money over and over again. I understand why the word money appears so often. Having something to eat and living with dignity is still the dream of many children. Among many painted words and written drawings, Alice worries about the size of the plant she's going to sow. 

The words, texts and drawings were planted in pots and in backyards, at school and at their homes. Those who have a yard at home took seeds that turn into trees. Those who like flowers took daisy seeds. Carrot and tomato seeds were also chosen very often. Alice was the only one who chose a seed by the name. She thought ‘arugula' was a nice name. The paper that had once been a tree now held seeds that would return to the earth through the children's hands. Recycling, drawing and painting were just the path. What I really wanted was to talk about sowing, sowing dreams with words and gestures. I really wanted to say that we need to look after our imagination ( of what we dream and desire) the way we look after a seed. Look after the seeds until they germinate, grow and become trees. Then look after the trees so that nobody overthrows them. Sowing words is serious business. Where I come from, a word is the blossoming of the voice of ancient speech. Since it is the strength of ancient speech, it is the dynamic foundation of life.

Photo: Teacher Míriam Ribeiro

The Selvagem Ways of Knowing pathway is a route of involvement. It's impossible to get involved with a place without getting involved with the stories of that place and the people who live there. Involvement is not about telling the other person what to do, but about making yourself available to rework on possibilities and paths, together. When we make ourselves available to listen, the other person will talk about the things that are taking up a lot of space in their chest. And it's precisely those things, which take up a lot of space, that give meaning to life, because life is made up of what abounds. 

May we be, then, abundant and sowers of good and beautiful words.

MEDICINAL GARDENS AND THE PURSUIT OF GOOD LIVING – by Cristine Takuá

Drawing: Fabiano Kuaray

I cultivate sacred medicines

For our family to heal

Our hearts to rejoice

And our minds to be free

From the prejudices

Of this imperfect humanity

From the disunity of those

Who don't know how to Love.

We keep going 

We keep going ...

Always walking 

Slowly 

One day, steadily

Wisdom 

We may find

Medicinal gardens and healing plant nurseries are ways of meeting the possibilities of living in a good and beautiful way in the territories we inhabit. There are many plants, sacred beings and great masters of knowledge. They heal us, cheer us up, nourish us and allow us to put ourselves in our place, with the balance we need to walk calmly.

For many, many generations, grannies dialogue with plants and cure us from everyday ailments, whether it's a stomach ache, fever, headache or anxiety, a jinx or a shock. We cure everything with little plants. Ever since I was a child, I have been dazzled by flowery backyards. Among the beauty and colours of the plants, there was no flower that wasn't medicine.

I remember ailments that affected me in my childhood and that affect my children in their childhood. They were all cured with plants. I continue in this study of learning, observing and sometimes dreaming, trying to look in the direction in which they guide me. This is how I learnt that the pains of the soul are healed by our masters, the magical and protective plants.

There is a sensitive delicacy in this process of dialogue that I sought to practice in the philosophy classroom. Walking with the students, recognising and researching the stories and uses of some Nhe'ërÿ plants.

For some years now, I've been inviting young people to practise studying with vision plants, which show paths and directions, revealing memories and activating possibilities for transformation in order to find the Good Life.

Thus, I go on dreaming of the Living Schools, blossoming through the healing of the Earth and the body, seeking meaning for life and for our daily struggle.

Photos: Carlos Papá

WHY SCHOOL? – by Veronica Pinheiro

"Miss V.'s doll is prettier because she's been playing with clay for longer".
José, 7 years old

Last week my father asked me why I always end up going back to work at schools. We had coffee in the late afternoon. I tried to tell him what I'm going to try to tell you here. 

The school has become the main agency for human (de-/con-)formation in Brazil: as an arm of the State, it is present in peripheries, hamlets and quilombos. There were 47.3 million children and adolescents enrolled in schools in the country in 2023, according to the School Census. Dialogue with basic education is urgent, since more than twenty percent of Brazil's total population is linked to a school unit. It becomes even more urgent because the school population is composed of the most vulnerable layer of society: children. And this dialogue is not exclusive to parents and educators. Economists, artists, physicists, astronomers, musicians... all of society should be committed to the future of education and childhood. Children are the most vulnerable to climate crises and all existing social crises. Changing the course of our country's childhoods is the only way to make the future possible. 

There's a proverb that says:

“‘We don't inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."¹

Textbooks still talk about hydroelectric power without mentioning the impacts caused by hydroelectric plants on life. I always remember Ailton Krenak saying that nature is not ‘a natural resource’, a storehouse from which we take things. This information needs to reach schools. Adults, as entities of nature, need to weave dialogues with children. A dialogue between living beings. The colonialist system is at the service of a structured, universalist, oppressive way of thinking, and it knows exactly what it's doing. It has no interest in creating real prospects for the future. The State which regulates education in Brazil is the same State which knows that every 24 hours 320 children and adolescents are sexually exploited in the country. The State at the service of colonialism is dead. It's our duty, as living people, to weave dialogues about life. Structures serve agendas; schools serve people. And because it serves people directly, it needs life. 

We, who have been playing around here for longer, can and should share with children possible ways to build ‘dolls’ and futures. I read in an education magazine that, in the United States, the same architects who designed prisons designed schools. The schools I studied in could easily have been used as locations for films set in prisons: they had high walls, bars on staircases, bars in corridors and bars in pavilions. We called the annex to the building where I went to secondary school ‘Carandiru’. 

In Brazil, only 34.5 per cent of municipal schools have a green area². The schools are pure cement; no natural light; no natural ventilation. If we follow the logic of 7-year-old José's thinking, architects, people who have been playing at designing for a long time, could design more beautiful schools and propose to institutions, in a technical way, projects that respect children's lives and nature. An architecture for the sake of good living for children and the school community. Bringing up the green, the trees, activating and awakening memories is work for a whole community. One teacher with 35 children can't break cement to plant a tree. That's why I went back to school with the Selvagem Ways of Knowing Group. I went back with a community.

We're still discussing things that should already be being practised. Those of us who have been playing here for longer have this habit of discussing things instead of practising them. It's a habit of those who have been schooled by colonialism. 

Colonialism distributes people into age groups, segregates them and says that schools are for teachers and pupils. If we borrow the world from our children, and they are at school, that's where we should be too, learning from those who lent it to us, learning how to give back what we borrowed. Being together in confluence with children shouldn't be a metaphor. Interaction and reciprocity are present in all natural phenomena. Contact is necessary for the maintenance of life. We live because life has a sensitive and super elaborate web of contact and co-operation³. 

At this point, we unite Nego Bispo's thinking with that of the boy José: if life is circular and it thrives with sharing, the experience converges in the condition of support for the grandchildren's generation. 

To summarise the answer, I can hope that the hand that trains also teaches to be free.

 _______

¹ A proverb credited to indigenous people from what we now call North America.

² ² Premise of a school. Green area, a space in the school's domain with vegetation or grass, free of sealing, which fulfils an educational, ecological, landscaping or recreational function, improving the aesthetic, functional and environmental quality of the school. Its pedagogical use is recommended through the development of environmental education projects, such as vegetable gardens, gardens, orchards, plant nurseries and ornamental beds.

³“…a simbiose é ‘simplesmente a convivência com contato físico de organismos de espécies diferentes. Parceiros na simbiose, companheiros na simbiontes subsistem literalmente tocando um ao outro ou mesmo um dentro do outro, no mesmo lugar e no mesmo tempo.”

Margulis, Lynn. Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution. New York: Basic Books, 1998.

THE STRENGTH AND WISDOM OF FIRE – by Cris Takuá

Photo: Carlos Papá

On the origins of fire 

"In the old days, when the Guarani didn't yet know how to use fire, they ended up eating all the things the ancients hunted, and the fruit they picked and had to be roasted, raw. They had a hard time as they didn't know about the fire. 

Then, one day, a Guarani Mbya saw a vulture flying high in the sky and thought: "I think I need to talk to someone. How can I cook things or even warm myself when it gets cold? How can I work it out? Someone in this world must know. Well, I'll start with the vulture". 

The vulture was flying high in the sky and the Guarani was just waiting for his chance. One day, the vulture was sunbathing on the ground, so the Guarani Mbya approached very slowly. Slowly, he asked:

"Getting some Sun? Getting Sun?"

The vulture said: "And what are you doing? Are you going to warm up too?" He replied: "Yes, I'm going to warm myself up too".

Then he sat down next to the bird. The vulture started to get curious and asked him: 

"What have you been up to?"

 Then he said: "Oh, I'm trying to find out how to make fire, because the Sun heats up. When the sun is hot, we all get warm, but when there's no Sun, when it's cold, we suffer a lot. So I want to find out how to make fire. And I want to know: who is the guardian of the fire? I also want to know which animal in this world, which bird in this world, is the guardian of fire". 

Then the vulture looked right at him and said: "Oh, the guardian of the fire is me".

The Guarani said: "Is that so?"

"Yes, when there's no Sun, when the Sun doesn't come into the world, we warm ourselves with fire", said the vulture.

"Is that so?", asked the Guarani. 

"Our creator said that if I gave this fire to someone one day, I would fly higher than everyone, I would be able to fly higher than the clouds," said the vulture. "I never thought I'd give the fire to someone, because I fly low up until today. I can't fly up there."

The Guarani Mbya replied: "Oh, so you've spoken to the right person! I want to make fire, I want to handle fire, I want to master fire, I want to be able to cook food".

Then the vulture said: "Oh yes, we can make a deal then. I want to fly higher, I want to get to know the clouds up there a bit more. And I'd also really like to eat the tobacco leaves, the planted tobacco leaves".

The Guarani Mbya replied: "Oh, so you've spoken to the right person, I'm going to plant tobacco. When it's ready, you come and eat the leaves. That's a deal". 

Photo: Cris Takuá

The next day, the Guarani Mbya took the tobacco seeds and began to plant his crops. He planted tobacco, a great deal of it indeed. He looked after it with the utmost care and, when the leaf became beautiful, all showy and ready to be harvested, the Guarani Mbya called out from afar: "It's ready! Now you can come!"

Then the vulture arrived and said: "Thank you very much! So let's make our deal. Tomorrow I'll come with the others and the next day, after we've left, you'll take over the fire. That's our agreement. And we'll leave a tool for you too. Whenever you need to make your fire, you'll have to build this instrument. It's like your bow: you will take a sturdy stick and make a hole in another piece of wood. With this bow, you'll find it easier to spin the wood. Because of the high temperature at the tip of the wood, it catches fire. That's how you'll learn, by practising".

The Guarani Mbya saw many vultures in his fields, eating the leaves. Some vultures even took the tobacco leaves. There were even chicks, lots of vultures indeed. They ate all the leaves and in the afternoon they all started to fly away.

He looked at the field and there was nothing. The next day he came back and everything was dry. At the edge of the field, he saw a wood on fire. He was so happy that he stayed there, tending the fire. He made a hut over it and looked after the fire for a long time, until the wood burned out. He didn't know what else to do and remembered the tool the vulture had left behind. He searched around and suddenly found it: a bow, a piece of wood and a stick, there, a little stick, and another piece of wood with a hole in it. He began to make tests and practised for a long time. One day, when he had almost given up, he tried again and realised that smoke was coming out of the hole. He started blowing, put the sticks in, and they started to catch fire. He was so happy!

He realised that the vulture had passed on the fire and the secret of the fire. The vulture could no longer be the guardian of the fire.

Today, the vulture lives above the clouds. The vulture is the bird that flies the highest, but is no longer the dominant one of the fire. The Guarani Mbya became the guardian of the fire."

(Carlos Papa Mirim Poty, Guarani Mbya)

Photo: Cris Takuá

Just Just like the Guarani, many indigenous peoples have their own ancestral narratives about the origin of fire and its significance for the cosmology of their traditions. Throughout history, ways of cultivating swiddens and management practices involving fire have been very important tools for conserving biodiversity, making use of ecological, social and cultural aspects from many peoples. However, this technique has been used inappropriately for criminal deforestation, causing an imbalance in the forests and in our lives. This violence related to the misuse of fire, or its abusive and careless use, is totally linked to the policies of monoculture export, of coffee, cattle, agribusiness, mining, urbanisation and capitalism in general, which do not respect plant, animal and mineral life, or even human life.

Fire is also a very ancient element connected to spirituality. Rituals and healing ceremonies use fire as the basis for transformation, which can be to protect a person who has passed away and guarantee their spirit a peaceful return. It is also traditionally used to scare away evil spirits and, for this reason, fire usually accompanies the nights, lit just after sunset and kept burning until dawn. In many cultures, when someone dies, it is customary to burn the house where the person lived and all their belongings, so that the spirit departs from the earth and leaves no memories.

Photo: Cris Takuá

There is a lot of knowledge and lore related to fire. It is sacred and has existed for thousands and thousands of ages. A great teaching from an elder who is more than a hundred years old is that indigenous technology allows regeneration. Fire is not used in whatever way, it is prayed over, permission is first sought and its use is controlled. 

When it's used in communal agriculture, it tends to overtake vines and small plants that are expected to be burnt. The women then plant the fast-cycling plants first, such as maize, beans and watermelons. Then comes the capoeira (secondary vegetation) and, with it, the animals and small creatures. The animals bring seeds, who gradually germinate. The second burning, the coivara, is a finer selection of fertile spots. From this point on, sweet potatoes, who take particular advantage of the potassium in the ashes, are planted. Many peoples go so far as to prepare food on the sites of the swiddens in order to take advantage of the ashes as a nutrient. The plants introduced in the first planting are the most fire-tolerant, followed by fruit trees, destined for the game. Today, many people use agroforestry techniques to recover soils that have been excessively degraded by human activity.

In general, what indigenous agriculture teaches us is what colonial arrogance refused to learn from it. Arrogance ended up destroying the vegetation, which hardens the land, decreases its permeability, increasing nutrient run-off and accentuating erosion, making it impossible for humus to accumulate and causing water to be lost.

Knowing how to tread respectfully and gently on Earth and how to relate to the sacred elements – water, fire, earth and air – is fundamental for us to understand the limits of this humanity of ours.

These teachings are alive in many cultures. And the practice of this knowledge is a form of resistance in a world where money intends to buy even souls.

We need to break through the barriers of arrogance and see that there are many possible worlds. The most important sowing today is the mental one! 

We must expand consciousness so that the respect for all forms of life can exist again!

Fire is sacred!

Photos: Carlos Papá

THE LORD OF THE BACKYARD – by Veronica Pinheiro

The backyards I knew were run by ladies. Backyard ladies. I grew up without a backyard to call my own. I did, however, immerse myself in my grandmother Dona Irene's backyard every week. A yard full of plants, trees and water. Plants to eat, to bathe with, to make tea with, to bless and to delight the eyes with. Backyards are suspended places where you play at being until it's time to be. Like me, most of my little companions on this journey of awakening memories in Favela da Pedreira don't have a backyard at home. 

Walking through quilombos and indigenous villages I keep thinking about backyards, terreiros and the absence of communal places in peripheral urban spaces. The absence of these spaces to play influences the sense of community, because when people play, they act out the world around them and the worlds they carry in their memories. By playing, the past and the present are reinvented. Playing is not exclusive to childhood: where I come from, women, men, stars, plants and animals play. Incarnate and enchanted beings also play. It was common to look up at the sky and say that the sun was hiding; to say that the trees were dancing... that the wind was singing. It was also common to play with the entities at home.

The Professor Escragnolle Dória Municipal School has a large yard that is poorly used due to security reasons. The backyard is the school's most vulnerable space, exposed to the weather and 'stray bullets'. If children from the outskirts don't have a yard at home and don't have communal spaces, where can they play? I turn the reading room into a backyard, a wild backyard with a bonfire and moonlight. We understood that the outings organised by the Learning Group in conjunction with the school also needed to be moments for playing. When walking with the children around the city of Rio de Janeiro, we realised that there were profound movements among them to broaden their view of themselves and their territory, to self-regulate their emotions and impulses, and to foster a sense of community. Organically, when they leave school, we see ‘rowdy’ students becoming leaders, taking on the care of their peers who need support. One child takes another by the hand and offers to spend the whole day by the side of the classmate who is scared or anxious. 

The backyard is the outside, the place of encounters and affective, sacred, communal and festive constructions. Our outings are an invitation to go outwards. And some people have very kindly collaborated so that we can go out safely and with a proper structure. We went to Quinta da Boa Vista with the financial support of a former pupil of the school. Mr Altair studied at Escragnolle in the 1980s and, when he heard that we were taking the children on nature outings, he readily offered to pay for the bus and snacks. Mr Altair and his wife were the backyard hosts, just like at the quilombo festivities. Many backyards were opened that morning. 

Taiana Simões¹ opened the door to the Quintais Brincantes, bringing Bia Jabor and Rafael Cruz to play. Bia is already part of the Selvagem community and Rafael is inviting us to play in UNIRIO's backyards. Quinta da Boa Vista would just be our location on earth.

Taiana, after the picnic and the walk, said:

‘The story tells us that a long, long time ago, in this very same land, there lived a gentleman called Quintas. Mr Quintas loved his backyard and took great care of everything that grew there. He loved it so much and cared for it so much that it was the most beautiful thing one could ever see. And that yard wasn't just about beauty. All the fruit that grew there was somehow very different from anywhere else. They were huge and very, very sweet indeed! They were so big that the oranges were as big as the heads of the children running around, and the watermelons were the size of truck wheels.

There was so much fruit, so big and delicious, that Mr Quintas' backyard provided food for the whole community around him. Whether it was people or birds, monkeys or skunks, everyone who passed by had something to eat and a good chat to have with Mr Quintas.’

I was surprised! I've known Quinta since I was a child and had never heard of Mr Quintas.

I followed the narrative attentively! Where was I, how have I never known of this incredible gentleman? I realised that what Taiana was telling was a created truth, a literary truth that happens in the imagination.

‘The news about this lovely yard, with its giant, delicious fruits, went from mouth to mouth. And it brought a whole host of curious people who just wanted to get something for themselves. And so, day after day, the whole yard became sad, nothing was the same as before, nothing was so vibrant anymore. And as time went by, Mr Quintas watched his yard die little by little, plant by plant. Until, not knowing what else to do to save his beloved yard, Mr Quintas began to feel so sad, but so sad, that he began to dig a hole in the ground, right in the middle of his yard. He dug a deep hole and put his two feet in it, covered the hole with soil and waited, waited, waited until the rain came. When the rain hit the ground, Mr Quintas's feet began to take root, going deeper and deeper into the earth. His legs became rigid, turning into a hard and very firm trunk. His arms and hair turned towards the sky, grew into branches and leaves that were very tall and eye-catching. Thus, every part of Mr Quintas‘ body was transformed into a large, beautiful tree, except for one part that continued to beat inside Mr Quintas’ chest, marking the rhythm of his new life. He thus became the Grove Man, the guardian tree of this backyard.'

'Miss V., does Mr Quintas exist?’ 

I replied: ‘I think so’. Angélica, aged 08, had already explained to me at the beginning of the year on a visit to the Botanical Garden that we are a bit like trees.

Realising the doubt in the eyes of those listening, Taiana handed out stethoscopes for the children to listen to the hearts of the trees. Doubt ceased to exist: every tree in that yard had a beating heart. The lord of the backyard was there.

The children, more attentive than me, could hear the baby jackfruit's heart. ’We've got to look after the trees, right, Miss V.? Everything's alive.'

Everything is alive. After telling me this, Bia ran off into the arms of her grandmother Lúcia. Until I arrived at the Escragnolle School, Lúcia was the teacher in charge of the unit's reading room. She retired a few weeks after my arrival, but she is present at all the outings as a volunteer. Lúcia is somehow planted, bringing life to the school in other ways. For a long time I wanted to be the wind. However... together with the children, I have longed to be a planted tree.

Photos of the children from the Professor Escragnolle Dória Municipal School

_________________________________________

¹Taiana Simões is an anti-racist educator with a sensitive eye for nature and childhood. Her work integrates different areas of knowledge such as ecoliteracy, science teaching, storytelling, racial literacy and agroecology. 

The story of Mr Quintas, by Henrique Santiago, the creator of Ecobé

THE DREAM OF A LIVING EARTH – by Cristine Takuá

Photo: Cristine Takuá

 This land is ours.

 Nũhũ yãgmũ yõg hãm.

Why is this land ours?        

Without the land there is no different school. Without the land there is no different health care. Because we fought to conquer the land. We fulfilled our dream and today we're going to create many projects on the land. Our land. Why do we call it Forest-School-Village? Because everything is a ‘classroom’ where there's a village. Where there are trees and shadow, there's a ‘classroom’. The children will sing our ritual. They imitate it. By the river, they play, sing and write in the sand. In the village, everything is a ‘classroom’. All the men go into the woods and sing in the woods. They chop wood and sing. That's why we called it Forest-School-Village, because the whole village is a school. Where there is shadow, the women get together and make handicrafts. The children come along, sit beside them, listen and learn too. The whole village is a school. Where there's a ritual house, there's a real school, a very important one. There will be singing, history, culture, traditional food. We, the Forest-School-Village community, want land for Yãmĩyxop, for children, for the future. Because we were all born together with the forest, we were all born together with the game. This land is our mother because it feeds us all. Our songs record all the game. Our songs record some of the animals we've lost. And the drawings also represent the animals. There are big animals that we've lost, but we record their names. Our song speaks their names. We Maxakali suffer, but our Yãmĩy accompany us. Every day the Yãmĩy go out with me, with all the Maxakali.

Photos: Carlos Papá

Why do I say Forest-School-Village?

If I leave here, if I go into the woods, my Yãmĩy will accompany me, I'll sing in the woods. If I play in the river, another Yãmĩy will accompany me. I'll imitate any animal: fish, caiman, swallow, I'll make their songs. That's why we call it Forest-School-Village. Here, my house is a school, because we're passing on our knowledge to the young people who are learning now.

We are teachers. We're talking. They're listening to the speech. We take the good words in order to wait for our memory, so that it doesn't fall. It has to grow. We have to have different knowledge, take on other knowledge in order to grow the Forest-School-Village.

Our dream is to take the land and rehabilitate it. Because the land needs healing, needs treatment. Because the earth is alive. The land speaks, the land looks at us and the land cries out. But the farmer doesn't listen to the land crying out and asking for help. That's why we want to reforest land and create the Forest-School-Village.

Dream-words of Isael Maxakali

 Arts: Marcos Maxakali

Photo: Cristine Takuá

At the beginning of August, we went to visit the Maxakali Living School in the Forest-School-Village. It was a very emotional meeting, where we were able to dialogue, listen to the songs of the spirits, draw with the children, the young people, the shamans and the elderly women.

Art is a very powerful portal for the Maxakali, as they transform the memory of chants into drawings with great skill and a very fascinating concentration.

With the support of Selvagem and the Tomie Ohtake Institute, we held a three-day workshop and had a dialogue about the territory, about the spirit animals of each ritual, about traditional foods and all the beings that inhabit the territory.

From left to right, artwork by Marineide Maxakali, Juan Maxakali and Jurema Maxakali.

Even though the forest has been almost completely devastated, the Maxakali keep the memory of all the animals and plants in their songs, dozens of species of bees and plants.

I've been sowing a dream in my heart and thoughts about connecting Hãmhī - Living Earth, a marvellous project for reforestation and the implementation of agroforestry backyards in the Maxakali villages, with the actions of the Living School and the healing of the body and spirit. There are many challenges that the communities face today, such as waste, the sadness of losing the forest, the lack of game, prejudice from non-indigenous people who live around the villages and in the city. All these challenges end up leading them to alcoholism and sadness. There are many problems that require a strength of resistance and a broadening of consciousness for transformation of action in the micro-politics of everyday life, in the yards that surround us.

Photo: Carlos Maxakali

Isael Maxakali's dream-words are profound intentions that are breathed into words by many Maxakali men and women who long to see the forest alive, the children happy and the peaceful sigh of Good Living in their territories.

On our walk to the Forest-School-Village, we had the delicate opportunity to perceive women's resistance in its strength and beauty. With their colour and laughter, they transform challenges into poetry at every new dawn.

Resist to Exist 

To dream so as not to stop believing 

That it's possible to metamorphose relationships

And make a more enchanting reality sprout 

Long live the Living Schools!

Photo: Cristine Takuá

Photo: Carlos Papá

THE ONES WHO HAVE THE POWER TO REPRESENT HAVE THE POWER TO DEFINE AND DETERMINE IDENTITY – by Veronica Pinheiro

– I did magic! – said a seven-year-old boy, after he managed to photograph his friend with a professional camera.

He looked at the camera's viewfinder, stopped and almost didn't breathe. I saw his body in absolute silence. I saw silence for the first time. In fact, he did magic. A shaman knows when he's healing, a teacher knows when he's teaching. And a magician knows when he's performing magic. This boy chose how to represent his friend. He carefully chose the angle and the moment. He saw himself in his friend and represented his friend as he would like to be represented. He may not know it, but the ones who have the power to represent are able to determine identity. Even without knowing it, my little companion realised the power of that act.

Most regular schools keep their students in cramped classrooms with closed windows and artificial lighting the whole time. Sitting in uncomfortable chairs, they spend hours without looking their friends in the eye. In silence. The imposed, recurrent and institutional silencing is violent, it subjugates and imprisons the subjects. What are the consequences of spending hours with someone without being able to look them in the eye, without looking outside? We have many criticisms of this model of education, but we can't ignore the fact that, in Brazil, urbanised children and adolescents, especially in the outskirts, are so vulnerable that school can become a space for interesting constructions. So... if school is a place for homogenising and docilising populations, it can also become a place for rupture and insurgency.

So many rights are denied: the right to know that you are nature; the right to play; the right to the city; to have access to the manifestations of the natural world...

In this movement of ours to awaken memories and strengthen territories, we share playing, walking and welcome children into spaces that are special to Selvagem. Until our trip to Quinta da Boa Vista in Rio de Janeiro, the activities were photographed by professionals who are part of the Selvagem Community. Erika Hoch is one of these professionals; generous and loving, she shares her vision of the meetings with us through photographic records. Erika would not be in Rio on the day of the visit to the Quinta. At that moment, Carol Delgado also joined our group. Carol, like Erika, brings happiness in her eyes and gestures. The look in their eyes is very familiar to me, a look of curiosity, a look of hope. When I look into their eyes, I see the children who share this journey with me. Photography, as well as a record, can be a manifestation of the gaze. And the gaze can be constructed. In Eduardo Galeano's ‘The Function of Art’, the boy Diego, overwhelmed by the wonder of seeing the sea for the first time, asks: "Help me look." Erika and Carol teach me how to look.

At Quinta da Boa Vista, Carol chose to let the children tell what their eyes saw. She hands the camera to the little ones. She teaches them how to operate the camera. She suggests agreements and accompanies the process. The next child to take a picture would not be taught by Carol, but by the colleague who preceded them in the activity. I follow Carol's movements and the children's movements. I don't give the volunteers much information about the children beforehand. I just tell them that they are sunny and energetic. The class that experienced this particular outing is a class known at school for its restlessness. The Quinta was the least advisable place for this group, a very wide place with no ‘attractions’. I decided to arrive there two hours before the children to find a special place among the trees. There was a specific organisation among the school's teachers to contain possible fights between the children. 

In the face of the vastness and the many trees, the more restless children entered a state of contemplation and deep self-reflection.

– Have you noticed that I'm not even making a mess today? – said the 7-year-old girl – I haven't hit anyone and I'm not going to. How do you get back here?

It was a day for gazing and constructing gazes. The registering process is a delicate one. The ones who have the power to represent have the power to define and determine identity. The right to look and be looked at is something denied to dissident bodies. When I write about the children of the Pedreira favela, I am representing and constructing a vision of what Pedreira's children are. The colonialist heritage says that some humans can determine the identity of others, and there are those who feel comfortable in this role. 

‘The ones who have the power to represent have the power to define and determine identity. [...] Pedagogy and the curriculum should be able to offer opportunities for children and young people to develop the capacity to criticise and question the systems of dominant forms of representation of identity and difference.’ Tomaz Tadeu da Silva

We have around three hundred photographs taken by the children. I confess I don't have the resources to understand the complexity of the narrative they've constructed about the walks they've photographed. I know very little and feel a lot these days. Most of the photographs are of smiles and hugs. When I was a child, do you know how children from the outskirts of town were represented in photographs? The textbooks I studied only put pictures of black and brown people in vulnerable situations. In science books, for example, there was always a racialised child in the chapters that talked about worms. In history books, black people always appeared in chains or working in socially despicable jobs. Just like a written text, a photograph is a text full of intentionality. There is no neutrality in images, and the children understood this.

They chose how they would like to be represented and seen: smiling, playing and running. Smiling, playing and running are acts of insubordination for children in a context of extreme violence. The records made by the children are unsubmissive to the pain and oppression imposed on the children of Complexo da Pedreira.

They determine how I should look at them. They are life unfolding into life.

The practice of photography in the hands of the little ones
also took place on a trip to Sugarloaf Mountain
on 3 July 2024.

THE AWAKENING OF THE DAY – by Cris Takuá

Drawing: Israel Maxakali

CANTO DO POVO DE UM LUGAR [SINGING OF THE PEOPLE FROM SOMEWHERE]

Music by Caetano Veloso translated into Maxakali 

Every day the Sun comes up 

And we all sing to the Sun of each day 

By late afternoon the earth goes golden 

And we all cry the end of the afternoon 

When at night, the moon is gentle 

And we all dance worshipping the night 

TIKMÛ’ÛN KUTEX HÃM PUXET TU

Mãyõn yã hãm tup pip ma xupep 

Hakmû tuk kutex mõkumak hãmtup pip ma

Mõnãm tûmnãg tu yã nãm te hãm’atã nãhã 

Iîg mûg potaha ãmãxãgnãg yî 

Mãyõnhex ãmniy pipma nõgtap 

Yîg mû ãte hãm yãg ûmõg me’ex ãmnîyhã

Art: Isael Maxakali

In the soft mist that surrounds the dawn, children, young people, grandmas and adults mingle in a melody of laughter, songs and the telling of dreams. The smoke from the campfire, together with the little fire that makes the coffee or heats the water for the mate herb, is present. Birds sing and enchant the moments that we experience at each new moment as the day wakes up.

The Sun is considered to be an usher and a creator, a source of life and energy, a sacred being who warms and illuminates us with radiant layers, encouraging us to walk the path of longings and challenges. Each people, in their ancestral memory, names the Sun in their own way: the Guarani name the Sun Kuaray or Nhamandu, when referring to their divinity. The Maxakali, Mãyõn. The Baniwa, Kamoi and the Huni Kuï, Bari.

Photo: Cadu Castro, Rio Silveira village

Many wise elders say that the Sun rises every day only because of the precious presence of little children here on Earth. It is for children, according to them, that the sacred Sun still comes, regardless of so many human contradictions.

Today, many people grow up fearing the Sun, always thinking about climate change and the global warming, but they don't remember, when they wake up and at dusk, to revere the Sun. Since childhood, indigenous peoples have been taught to honour and revere the Sun, the moon and all the entities of the sky and the Earth, the visible and the invisible ones. And immersed in this poetics of resistance, each one, in their own way, aims to follow the footsteps of their ancestors with respect, delicacy and beauty.

Drawing: Jose Vhera Guarani

NHAMANDU TENONDE
Our First Sun God 

Nhamandu tenonde

Oyvarapy py

Imba’ekuaa gui

Onhembojera

Pytuymã mbyte gui

Nhanderu

Nhamandu tenonde

Nhamandu tenonde

Tenonde

Tenonde

Photo: Cris Takuá

THE SUN SHALL SHINE ONCE AGAIN - by Veronica Pinheiro

“The only safe way to store data long term, like proper long term, is in intergenerational relationships, where data is stored in narratives, intergenerational narratives. That can last for forty, fifty, sixty thousand years. That can last as long as relations are continued—that data will last. It’s the only safe way to store data in the long term”
Tyson Junkaporta¹

One day I heard from the master Nego Bispo: ‘We're not decolonial, we're countercolonial. You don't need the academy to talk about the things your grandmother taught you. It's the things your grandmother taught you that have kept you alive.’ Every day teachers, educators and students ask me about bibliographical references. We were raised to trust what books say. However, before there were books on medicinal plants, herbalists, shamans and praying women shared medicines and therapies with their communities. Intergenerational knowledge continues to flow and confluence. They don't flow back. Academic knowledge flows back: for example, eugenics once had scientific validity. Today, eugenics has no proof or validity for science. When there's no circularity, you have to go back the way you came.

Intergenerational narratives are circular: while something goes, something stays; while something stays, it goes. An education that aims to awaken memories seeks to strengthen children's connections with the territory, strengthening bonds, knowledge and life practices that exist there. In circularity, what once was, what is now and what is to come are sensitively connected. The narrative is the thread that structures this fabric of life. Narratives hold the consciousness of what we are. Generational narratives are not just for awakening socio-historical awareness, they hold pillars that make it possible to read oneself through one's own eyes. 

We tell stories to think about possible worlds. Worlds in which the diverse, the cosmological, the natural and the organic fit. In the Bakongo world, for example, the word Ubuntu, which cannot be translated directly, expresses the awareness of the relationship between the individual, the community and everything that exists. According to Bakongo African philosophy, when a human being (untu) is born, a sun is born. And good living is achieved when all the suns are lit.

In a certain way, stories make it possible for the suns to keep shining. When Kauê Karai Tataendy, a Guarani child, asks me how I organise my workshops and if he can bring the materials to recreate the drawings with Flávio, his friend, in the village, I think that, somehow, we are animating each other once again. Kauê's love for Flávio, plus his desire to share everything he has learnt with his friend, keep each other's suns burning. Kauê moves so that Flávio's sun continues to shine.  

Sharing is the energy that drives us. As long as there are confluences and sharing, the sun shall shine once again.

Once again, let's get animated. We are children of the sacred.

Daily we re-exist under the sun.

¹The interview with Tyson Junkaporta can be accessed here https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/deep-time-diligence/

JEROKY, FLEXIBLE SPROUT – by Cris Takuá

Photo: Alexandre Maxakali

"All that is born is like a sprout. All that sprouts dances: ojeroky. Thus, by dancing, things arise and grow. The Guarani term jeroky is translated as "dance", but if we delve deeper into its roots, it means "to blossom like a new seed".

"The new seed germinates in the darkness of the underground and from it the root sprouts and spreads. The first leaf appears and, dancing, it has to leave the underground in search of light. It's the same with our bodies: we need to dance to get out of our mother's womb and into the light."

Carlos Papa and Anai Vera

(https://piseagrama.org/artigos/jeroky-a-danca-do-broto/)

Photo: Cris Takuá

In the depths of darkness, thousands and thousands of times ago, life and all that dwells in the world was made to blossom, so the Guarani thinkers tell us.

Since gestation in their mother's womb, babies dance, dance and come naturally into the world. And from that moment on, like a little sprout, each one of us blossoms until we start to crawl, walk and tread the paths of our dreams and yearnings.

Photo: Carlos Papá

Curiously, I've noticed that throughout life we're moulded by non-living schools and square cities, designed to always walk in a straight line, to always sit with our bodies folded in a chair.

By doing this, we unlearn the basic principle of Jeroky as the Living School of the forest makes us practise. To walk in the forest is to dance, to dance like a "flexible sprout". Just like sitting under a tree to tell and listen to stories. Our bodies remain in constant harmony with the melody of the forest.

When we allow ourselves to feel our bodies and the natural movements that forests teach us to live with, we begin to connect with life that pulses and is incredibly wild.

Photo: Cris Takuá

Photo: Alexandre Maxakali

*Video by Carlos Papa – Jeroky
https://youtu.be/mlipzvcQ9wM?si=kexo4c8AEEwNVAV0

THE GRANDMOTHER, THE CHILDREN AND THE WATERS – by Veronica Pinheiro

"Waters are like our relatives. In the old days, my grandparents used to say that one should not throw dirty things in the water, because it's the same as throwing dirty things in one's grandmother's or mother's eye", kujá1 Iracema Gah Teh 

Photo: Tania Grillo

A liquid and circular conversation. Confluences between a Kaingang grandmother, the children from Rio and the waters of Guanabara Bay. She, from Rio Grande do Sul. They, from Rio de Janeiro, born near the Acari River. The Bay, an estuary of countless rivers, a partially enclosed body of water formed by the meeting of fresh waters mixed with salt water from the sea. The grandmother, the children and the waters met in the city of Rio de Janeiro, on Sugar Loaf Mountain. In the children's school calendar, the activity is listed as a school trip; however, I call it an Encounter. A movement of connection and an expansion of perspective. Because, if each one sees with the eye they have and can only understand what their feet recognise as the path, when people with different eyes –whose feet recognise other paths– meet, new fabrics of life are established. In the encounter, the diverse connect in such a natural way that an individual can begin to desire other possibilities of relating to life, to the cosmos and to themselves. The encounter is the natural event that upholds life. It's like this in the forest, in the mountain ranges, in the quilombos... in the favelas.

This diary page is a brief and superficial account of a Kaingang grandmother's meeting with the children on top of a hill surrounded by water. On July 3rd 2024, we received the children at school at 7.30am for breakfast. The pink bus was already waiting for us. Every day, more people join together to dream up new ways of life for the Pedreira favela. Even the driver, who also owns the bus, has become a partner in the activities of the Ways of Knowing Group with the school. Mr Jonas said that the journey on July 3rd was on him and he didn't charge us anything that day. From the school, we took a 5th grade2 class, teachers and our dear headmaster Daniele Oziene. The routine of a 40-hour working week plus the bureaucracy and many responsibilities of being a school headmaster in a school in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro make moments like this very special; Dani was with us. Six volunteers from the Selvagem Community³, Rafael Cruz and Dona Iracema, with her Kaingang family, were waiting for us in Urca, at the starting point for the cable car ride.  

The number of adults is planned so that the children don't have to walk in line. It's also so that the teachers can stay out of the role of conductors. In very small groups, without a voice telling them all the time what they need to watch, children and adults can pay attention to everything, to a single point or to nothing at all. I don't understand the Western need to fill in all the gaps all the time. Allowing the eyes to find their way, the ears to find their way, the skin to find its way is allowing memories – dormant due to routines and the plastering of the school process – to awaken. Western education anaesthetises. Life, however, is synaesthetic. To wake up is to reconnect with what keeps us alive. Despite being urbanised, we are nature. Our urbanity is recent, artificial, supplementary and imposed. Every child has the right to know that they are nature. When we understand ourselves as nature, we don't feel alone. Cities are full of people, and yet people feel alone. Being disconnected makes an individual feel lonely in a house full of beings. I say beings because the city and its ways of being, reproduced at school, create models of connection only between equals. In a zoo, animals live only with their equals, as if nature is like that. In a housing estate too, the equals share that space. This is also the case in most schools.

Photo: Carol Delgado

At Morro da Urca we were welcomed by the waters. An immense cloud crossed the massif and hid us. We stayed inside the cloud for a few minutes. Surrounded by water that moistened our skin and hair without getting us wet. We were generously kept in the waters of the rivers from above. The scene reminded me of a prayer house full of smoke. 

Freshwater embrace. For a few minutes I thought we wouldn't be able to see the waters of the bay or the horizon, but that was not a bad thing. The beauty of the water from above was so enchanting that the embrace was worth the journey.

Photo: Carol Delgado

The encounter was with the grandmother, the children and the waters - the waters of the bay and the waters that move within the beings. Grandma Iracema is a kujá (spiritual leader) of the Kaingang people, from the Nonoai Indigenous Land. She knows medicinal herbs and the powers of the forest. She is also the chief of the Gah Reh Multiethnic Retaken Village, located on Santana Hill. On our tour itinerary, there's always time for a conversation. Wise and very attentive to everything, Iracema understands that each one sees with their own eyes and understands from their own perspective. Iracema was wearing a feather headdress, and the children of Pedreira had certainly never seen anyone wearing a headdress before. Iracema, however, started from the commonplace and said: "I am Iracema, a Kaingang grandmother". Done! A grandmother, every child knows what a grandmother is. That information was enough to make us a family, even if only temporarily.

Photo: Carol Delgado

Rafael Cruz, an actor and researcher of childhoods, was the one who started the conversation. He kindly accepted the invitation to the meeting and presented the waters of Guanabara Bay with data and words enchanted with kindness. It was up to me to provoke the group: Anyone here doubts we are nature? I heard reflections full of wisdom from the children. Seeing the doubt in some of their eyes, I asked Chief Iracema: did you ever doubt you were nature? She replied, bringing the waters into the conversation in an unusual way: I never doubted it, because I'm round water. We all stopped to listen with eyes and ears. Even the visitors to the cable car park and the park staff stopped to listen to the waters that were flowing and confluencing in Grandma Iracema. A liquid, circular grandmother. I still find myself thinking about it. 

The Kaingang people consider there to be two types of water in the world: Goj tej (long water, from the rivers) and Goj ror (round water, from the springs, the lakes). These waters are complementary, just as the whole Kaingang cosmology is. The brothers Kame and Kainru are the ones responsible for the origin of the world, according to the Kaingang. They were the ones who created and gave marks to all plants, animals and to the Kaingang people. Everything that exists on Earth has a Kame or Kainru creator half. And each half has different powers and energies that are opposite and complementary.

Kame - ancestral twin that bears the long mark – the Sun and the rivers belong to the Kame half

Kainru – ancestral twin that bears the round mark – the Moon and the springs belong to the Kainru half 

Photo: Carol Delgado

The conversation jumped from advice to healing, history to science, smiles to glances. On the lap of the mountain, our ancestral grandmother, we listened to the grandmother chief talk about love. At the end of her words, we all hugged each other with water, as water, under the Sun. Curricula consider ethnic-racial relations, but here we think in terms of life relations. To keep thinking, here's a transcript of part of what we heard:

"Water is sacred, it is life for us
Through water, we live on as well.
Water is our sustenance, part of us.
Water is part of every living being.
We will never survive without water,
both salt and fresh.
Salt water is also good for skin diseases.
Fresh water is also very good for the body. For any living being.
When I say living being, I also mean our mother Earth, who survives on water.
The tree. Us. All that lives on Earth.
All that lives in the water.
So water is very sacred.
Why didn't we dirty it in the old days?
I say, we don't dirty it, we don't put dirty things in it.
My grandmother and grandfather used to say to me:
"When you put something dirty in the water, either in the eye of the water or in the freshwater, it's the same thing as you putting something dirty in the eye of your grandmother or your mother.
They have marks.
There are waters we call Goj ror, Goj ror.
For us – you might know that, right? – that's when the water springs.
This one is called Goj ror.
Guaíba, for us, is ti ninó goj mag (an arm of great water).
And why do I say ti ninó goj mag (the arm of great water)? Is this arm fresh or salty?
Ti ninó… what's the name?
Guaíba is ti ninó of the sea (the arm of the sea)
It's fresh. Yes, Guaíba is fresh.
So where does Guaíba come from?
From all these goj ror that flow down.
So Guaíba is goj tej.
And there is also goj ror flowing down to Guaíba, for supplementation.
So they have marks, they supplement each other. As we, Kaingang, have our marks, Kamē e Kainhru.
If there were no goj ror, we could not survive.
So they are sacred, part of us, and we are part of them."

Transcript of Gah Teh's speech during a contemporary dance "Round and long water". The same was shared by Iracema during the meeting with the children.

__________ 

¹ kujá – shaman and indigenous leader Iracema Gah Teh

² Our intention is to take all three groups of 5th graders from the school to Sugarloaf Mountain. We have already taken two classes so far.

³ Ana Paula Santos, Carol Delgado, Geórgia Macedo, Tania Grillo and Camille Santos

Thanks to 

Georgia Macedo who made it possible for Iracema to come. Georgia has a master's degree in Social Anthropology from UFRGS and is a dancer. She works in cultural production, in partnership with indigenous artists and as a dance educator in the city of Porto Alegre.

Rafael Cruz, an actor and researcher of childhoods, member of GITAKA, the GITAKA research group: "Childhoods, Ancestral Traditions and Environmental Culture".

Carol Delgado is an anthropologist as a professional and a curious person by nature. Mother, researcher, writer and founder of Puxadinho, a network laboratory of anthropological experimentation for plural futures. 

Iracema Kaingang's family:
Angélica Kaingang, a native of the Votouro Indigenous Land, has a bachelor's and master's degree in Social Work and a PhD in Education from UFRGS
Nyane, 13, has accompanied her mother Angélica Domingos through the cities and indigenous territories since the womb, in the struggles of the indigenous peoples.

TAKUAPU, THE ECO OF THE SOUND OF KNOWLEDGE – by Cris Takuá

Art: Cris Takuá

“Nhanderu ma ombojera raka’e takua’i, ramo haema kyringue kunhã’i oiko ramo ojapo huka’i tuu pe Takuapu’i há’e yn vy ma Ajaka’i, Nhanderu oikuaa huka’i raka’e kunhangue’i pe guãrã, nhandevy oeja nhande rete oapresenta haguã, há’evy há’epy nda’evei avakue pó rupi rive ju jaxevavai haguã, nhandere reko porã’ in haguã py nhanembou. Any ramo takua’i ipiru pa’i harami havi nhanderete nhaendu jaiko axy vy.”

 "The God gave birth to a little takuara, that's why when a baby girl is born, the father makes a Takuapu'i (sounding taquara, from a sort of bamboo) or Ajaka'i (a basket). Nhanderu gave birth to the little takuara, so that it would be the symbol of Guarani women, and that's why we, women, have to be well looked after by men. It wasn't for nothing that Nhanderu sent us to Earth. Our bodies are sacred; if they're not well looked after, the takuara dries up. That's how we feel when we're wounded on the outside and in the soul."

                                                 Mariza de Oliveira, Itanhaém village, Biguaçu/SC

During the concentration of the moonlit night, chants of women who, in their prayers, connect with the guardian spirits of everything that dwells in the forest, are manifested. In the rhythm of this intoning of voices and thoughts, the Takuapu, a musical instrument made of takuara, echoes on the dirt floor, making connections between Sky and Earth and between the visible and the invisible. In my sensitive meditations, I came to understand the Echo of the Sound of Knowledge. This instrument's profound meaning evokes in me the strength and courage to continue searching for balance, serenity and health in body, mind and spirit.

The Takuá is very useful in Guarani life, as well as being a sacred being with a lot of wisdom. With it, women weave straw to make baskets and also to make the roofs of their houses. It is also used to make pari, to catch fish. All the uses and coexistence with the takuara are very important in Guarani life. The Takuapu, the musical staff that the women play during their prayers, tarova and also mborai, is made from the takuara trunk. The women also know how to use takuara jelly to soften their hair and skin. From takuaras also comes takuaraxó, a larva that sprouts in the centre of the trunk and serves as food. And from the Takuaruçu, a specific takuara full of thorns, comes a takuaraxó that serves as a medicine to guide and give visions to both the Guarani and Maxakali people. The larvae form the takuara are only born every 30 years and serve as a way of telling a person's age. If you're 30, you're one takuara, if you're 60, you're two takuara. Some people live for three or even four takuaras. 

Photo: Carlos Papá

The takuara's life cycle is related to the knowledge of Guarani life. The takuara dies at the age of 30, by drying out, and then the takuara flowers and produces larvae. The takuara has a juice when ripened, and the larvae eat this juice. Then the takuara dries up and the seeds fall out and fly around. Mice and birds eat the seeds, but some sprout. And the sprout spreads, creating clumps.

We're noticing that the number of takuara in the forest is decreasing a lot, possibly due to the warming of the Earth's climate, but also because the young are no longer knowing how to respect its life cycle or are no longer caring about it in this way. The takuara isn't managing to mature and spread as usual. Everything in life has a cycle and a time to transform and be reborn. Respecting each thing's time is knowing how to walk slowly over the territory.

Photo: Carlos Papá

Carlos Papá tells us: "Ever since takuaras appeared in the world, people have done things that shouldn't be done to them. The takuara, which we call Takuá, is one of the daughters of Nhanderu Papá, our celestial father. They say that Anhã, Nhanderu's brother, wanted a companion and took an interest in one of Nhanderu's daughters, the beautiful Takuá. Anhã asked his brother if his niece could accompany him around the world. Nhanderu approved, but said she could never go into the water. She could even get wet, but never dive in. Anhã was very happy, and Takuá accompanied him everywhere. One day they went to a waterfall. Anhã dived into the water while she watched. Then he invited her in, but she didn't want to because of her father's recommendation. However, Anhã didn't think there would be a problem and pulled her by the arm. He said that his brother picked on everything that was pleasant, which was why he had forbidden it. Takuá then asked Anhã not to let her go. She was really enjoying it! But he ended up letting go of her arm so that she could try diving into the river. Not seeing the girl anymore, Anhã tried to pull her by the arm again and pulled a basket out of the water. He started shouting for her, but there was only the basket, which began to fall apart. Then Anhã went to his brother with the broken basket in his hands. He said that Takuá had disappeared and all that was left was the straw. Nhanderu asked for the straw and rewove the basket. He made a very pretty little basket again and put it aside. He told Anhã that now Takuá would no longer go with him, because she would no longer be his companion. Anhã said he didn't want that woman any more because she was made of straw and very complicated. Then Nhanderu told Takuá that she would teach women how to be beautiful and do beautiful things. To this day, Takuá lives in a place called Nhanderu amba, the celestial abode. Women who have the Nhe'e, the spirit of this place are called Takuá. They are very careful and true, Takuakypy'y, the younger sisters of Takuá."

Art: Wera Mirim

IN NATURE, NOTHING LIVES ALONE – by Veronica Pinheiro

Photo: Wagner Clayton

We begin the last text of the semester with the words of teacher Miriam. She works at the Escragnolle Dória School in two shifts, morning and afternoon, looking after 62 children aged five and six, from Monday to Friday.

"Since the arrival of the Selvagem team at our school, we have observed and experienced a new movement within the school. Both because of the access to materials that are not so common in public school classrooms, but also because we have someone to lead us to take a closer look at the richest things around us. In schools in conflict-ridden areas like ours, where children have their ears trained to hear gunshots, getting them to quieten down to listen to the birds, the sound of the wind or what's going on inside them and turn it into art is almost magical. Almost, the line between the magical and the real is so thin that every now and then we invade our colleague's classroom to take photographs as an urge to stop time.

Watching them paint with the paint they produced from the soil found on the school ground, revealing photos of the leaves and branches that fell from the backyard, observing the nature that makes up our territory... Observing, creating, producing. A rich sequence of meanings and I, as a teacher, have the privilege of allowing myself to also be a student at that moment. I sit down like my students, wait for my piece of clay, join them with countless questions, we all try, we do our best, we smile at the results, we end up proud of ourselves for what we've been able to create. We go back to the classroom certain that we are all talented, demystifying the idea that every teacher knows everything. We go back to class with a new outlook on ourselves. I think everyone who has been part of the project has felt this way. We've been led to new conclusions about ourselves, we've seen ourselves as an important part of nature and we've realised how nature impacts us as much as our actions impact nature."

Anna Dantes, Madeleine Deschamps and I had long conversations in December 2023 and January 2024 about ways of learning and the possibilities of developing the workshops and projects carried out in 2023 with the Children's Group. We talked about creating links with schools and teachers. When I suddenly had to return to work in Rio de Janeiro's Municipal Government, we talked about how we could activate the studies and thoughts present in the Selvagem cycles in a classroom. At some point I thought about returning to work as a pedagogical coordinator, but I accepted the challenge of returning as a reading room teacher in a children's school. Children have always been present in my life, but I've never been a teacher regularly looking after the little ones in the classroom.  

I remember being happy to become the "reading room teacher". I remember laughing and remembering my grandmother reading the coffee grounds in the cup, the clouds and the children's eyes. Dorvelina, my mother's mother, couldn't read or write Portuguese, but she read life and interpreted dreams. Reading and interpreting, at home, was an everyday thing, almost never related to books: "We looked at the earth and read it." Everything was text and everything could become text. The books arrived home recently. I thought it was funny being the mediator of reading groups at a children's school. I silently thanked the kindness of life: we were facing the possibility of starting a Learning journey in dialogue with life.

What is shared in the diaries is only part of the work, because our path is walked by many feet. Workshops, outings, organisation of proposals and materials only happen because the Ways of Knowing Group is made up of an invisible network that expands, interconnecting precious care. We arrived at Complexo da Pedreira dreaming of awakening memories and strengthening children's connections with the territory. Beyond the problems that make our days difficult, we mention the ancestral, natural and organic territory. We reminded the children and teachers that we are nature, living and pulsating nature.

Madá was worried about the weekly workload that I would have to fulfil and how this could overload me. We believed, together, and dreamed up budgets, outings, workshops and a "cosmic party" for the end of the year with children dressed as stars and planets. We ended the semester happy. We practised good living in a land that is only known for its evils. The poet said that "Fundamental is love, indeed/It is impossible to be happy alone". Despite all the challenges, everything went happier and more powerfully than we imagined. The school responded much more quickly than we expected. It's been fundamental to keep going with love and together. Ubuntu, I am because we are. Like the trees in the forest, who only exist because they are intimately connected, the Ways of Knowing course is intimately connected to a web of regenerating beings. 

Together with the reports we received from teachers and research groups, this semester we were invited by GERER (the Ethnic-Racial Relations Office of the Municipal Department of Education of Rio de Janeiro) to the 4th GERER Journey – Paths and perspectives for possible futures¹. In response to the invitation, we prepared a Learning Guide from Selvagem, GAS, to be shared with 1544 public primary schools in the city of Rio de Janeiro. "Care is not an exchange, it's a sharing," as Nego Bispo used to say. We didn't create anything. When we arrived at Complexo da Pedreira, there were already many other sharers who welcomed us. From the Cotton Tree at the entrance of the school to the birds that visit us every afternoon, we thank all life and all beings that have been with us this semester.

Àwúré

¹Complementary material for the Journey on Ethnic-Racial Relations. https://sites.google.com/view/gerer-sme/jornadas-da-gerer/iv-jornada-da-gerer

THE POWER OF THE MOUNTAINS – by Cris Takuá

Photo: Carlos Papá

Granny Mountain

The power of stones 

In the midst of a Spagyria immersion 

Very deep, the teachings

brought from ancient times 

Healing is a delicate dialogue

With the elements 

With all beings 

That enables us to transform 

And weaves bonds of joy 

To strengthen the children 

 the Territories 

And the awakening of memories 

Long Live the Living Schools 

Long Live the living laboratories 

From the Essence Houses.

Photo: Ju Nabuco

Hiking through mountains and valleys, we arrived in São Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras in Minas Gerais, a sacred land full of stones and stories. There, in this enchanted place, we found a real school, a School of Spagyria, co-ordinated by two teachers who are very sensitive and attentive to the deep mysteries of nature.

For three days I accompanied the coordinators of the Guarani and Tukano-Desana-Tuyuka Living Schools, and three young people who went along with us. We talked about history, philosophy, alchemy and spagyria (the art of producing medicines, separating and uniting, extracting and purifying through the sensitive art of knowing the matter of beings).

We held a dialogue about deep knowledge and, through the exchange between the group, we felt that once knowledge enters us, it sticks and never leaves. From our willingness to listen to things carefully, we allowed ourselves to feel and perceive our surroundings. Everything that descends from the sky and rises from the Earth goes through a transmutation and guides us on this journey of in-depth studies in the search for the Good Living.

Photos: Ju Nabuco

The dream of the Living Schools is to activate, animate and create webs of affection and care, so that we can walk around taking care of those who take care of others and encourage the sowing of knowledge. When we plant a garden within ourselves, we take on the responsibility of being a multiplying agent, capable of overcoming the barrier of the visible and seeing and dialoguing with invisible beings.

A great lover of plants was Paracelsus, a 16th century philosopher and doctor. He used to say that humans start to get sick when they move away from God, from nature. He said:

“He who knows nothing, loves nothing.

He who can do nothing understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who understands also loves, notices, sees…

The more knowledge is inherent in a thing,

the greater the love.…

Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.”

So we spent three days in dialogue, harvesting plants and preparing medicines and, in these sensitive moments, we learned that the power of the sky that lies in the plant awakens the power that dwells within us. But in the creative processes of transforming matter, we need attention and concentration. Dispersion through too much talking and inattention leads to wasted time.

Photo: Ju Nabuco

That's how I was able to feel and understand the deep relationship with fire, earth, water and air and with the elemental beings: plants, animals, minerals and universal beings. In a profound connection with ancient times, Guarani, Tukano, Maxakali and Egyptian philosophies crossed paths and dialogued in an enchanting profoundness.

The young people were inspired, sang, cried and poetised their perceptions and inspirations to keep going, strengthening the Living Schools and the dream of achieving a good and beautiful way of being in their territories.

Photo: Ju Nabuco

______________

This meeting was made possible through Ju Nabuco's liaison with Mestre Índio and Ana, teachers at the Escola de Espagiria, and the Escolas Vivas at Selvagem, cycle of studies on life.

WHERE IS THE FOREST? INSIDE THE CHEST – by Veronica Pinheiro

The school reading room resembles a library in terms of organisation and functionality. Books on shelves, divided by subject; large tables and chairs. A planned space that takes into account storage areas, activity areas and circulation areas. A few general rules are common in reading environments: enter only with the material you need to study; enter in a "disciplined" manner; keep your voice and gestures discreet so as not to disturb other readers.

The first stories I learnt weren't from books kept on shelves. The first narratives and lessons I learnt came from Ms Cassiana's mouth, an elderly woman who used to sit on a wooden bench under a pepper tree, late in the afternoon, on the hill where I was born. To find out the end of a story, we sometimes had to wait until the next day or go after Ms Cassiana while she took care of the plants. She would bless the children and hold them in her lap while she prayed. It was a story-prayer, sung and choreographed with leaves. I remember looking for her one day and not finding her. I never saw her again. Shortly after Ms Cassiana's vanishing, the bench and the pepper tree disappeared. But the words told, sung and prayed are still with me today. 

Today, I'm the old lady who sings verses to children. This week, I went into the reading room and removed all the chairs. I also removed the tables and turned off the lights. And I lit my campfire in the middle of the room. On the floor there were mattresses, 15 copies of the same book and I was sitting there just like old Cassiana used to wait for me. 

I learnt from Carlos Papá that the darkness welcomes everyone, making no difference between people. And it was in the dark of the room that we met grandparents' stories and shared care and kindness. "What is this?" "A camp, don't you see?" I followed their entrance with just my eyes and ears, and said nothing. "Yes, it's a camp. Check out the fire." "Let's sit down because it's dark and cold." It was 8am and it was 31°C outside the room. Inside the room, time and place were moving with no conventions. 

They sat in a circle. The first class I welcomed that day had 28 children present, most of them aged 8, and they were curious to find out what was going to happen. For the first action, they would form pairs of readers. I asked a student who already knew how to read to team up with a classmate who didn't yet know how to read. Once they were in pairs, they had to choose a corner in the reading room to read the story. Each pair cuddled up and hid in any way they could and wanted. They set up little huts and created burrows to read in. I told them that learning is a process in which everyone collaborates in whatever way they can. They took it upon themselves to look after their classmates. I watched as the listeners slowly slid down the mat until they were lying down to listen attentively to the words read by their friend. And unintentionally, at that moment we established another relationship with that floor. Every time we had laid down on the floor of the reading room, it had been to protect ourselves from shooting. For the first time, it wasn't fear that drove us to the ground. It was the earth teaching us to strengthen bonds. The class teacher entered thinking the room was empty and was surprised by the scene and the gestures. Sensitively, she left without being noticed. 

Our second action was to sit round the campfire again. Now the story would be read by me and followed by everyone, each with a copy of the book in their hands. It was a solemnity, the flames of the LED fire warmed our circle. I began like this:

"Sônia Rosa, the book's author, dedicates this book to her two great-nephews: Phelipe de Oliveira Nunes and Vitória Oliveira Silva. I, Veronica, dedicate this reading to my students, who are sitting round the campfire with me." 

Monifa's Treasures is the story of a little girl who, on her birthday, was chosen to keep her family's "treasure". Monifa was the name of the girl's grandmother's great-grandmother. Monifa arrived in Brazil on a slave ship and wrote many diaries full of dreams, prayers and songs. My voice tried to match the solemnity of the moment, but my eyes decided to water the earth themselves. Not just mine, but many eyes watered the earth that day. As we read, we grew closer to each other. The circle soon became a nest. A small, soft hand collected the tears that came from my eyes so as not to wet the book. Other hands supported my shoulders and back. Another pair of hands ran through my tresses.

I don't remember ever crying in front of a class. At the beginning of the year, I was "the auntie who comforted" the children who cried during the adaptation week. In the middle of reading camp, I was looked after by the children who understood that, in the learning process, everyone co-operates as they can. So I started to receive care. I read the story and they read Monifa's notes. 

Around the campfire, sitting on the ground, we hugged each other at the end of the reading. 

Someone said that there was only one thing missing in our camp: "marshmallow". Another added that there were two things missing: "marshmallow" and the forest. Before I could formulate an answer, Enzo, who never seems to be listening to what we're saying, said: "The only thing missing was 'marshmallow', the forest is inside my head."

Monifa means "I'm lucky". Full of forest inside, I was the luckiest person in the world.

Photos: Wagner Clayton

BLOWN WORDS – by Cris Takuá

Art by Juliana Russo

Good and beautiful words 

Massage the attentive soul.

Thoughts invade my being with magic

In search of understanding

The mysteries of the forest sciences.

Words, like a breath,

Echo our thoughts

They fly and dance in the air

In search of knowledge, 

But they are not always 

Clear and understandable 

To the beings who receive them,

They may cause chills or 

Profound emotion.

How difficult smooth communication is

In a world soaked in information!

Words heal,

Rejoice 

And they also hurt

If misplaced!

We need to take care of our words 

So that feelings 

Don't disturb our dreams

And our walk.

I carry on with my research 

Sometimes dreaming 

Sometimes awake

Gazing at sacred beings

And seeking wisdom and tranquillity

To continue poeticising

My multiple and profuse silence

The certainty of every new dawn 

Of more harmony 

Of more joy 

Among all beings 

Between the visible and the invisible

Between the indivisible that dwells 

On land and sea. 

We must be silent, 

We must love,

We must feel more,

We must be ourselves

At every moment, 

At every breath of our lives.

Go, walker, before the day dawns

Go, walker, and weave the night 

Before the dreams...

Art de Fabiano Kuaray

For humans, the word – this ancient code – communicates thoughts and builds bridges between worlds. For many, many centuries, we have sung, prayed, spoken and blown messages of transformation.

Knowing how to place yourself, entering and leaving everywhere is an ethic for being willing to live with the diversity of beings who think and long to achieve the sensitive wisdom of feeling their own shadow.

Ideological disputes often cause friction and can push away the energy that we build and name as friendship, respect and exchange of knowledge.

Remaking or reweaving the web of relationships requires an ability to understand the imperfection that dwells in our humanity, so bruised by the contradictions of everyday life.

When we realise that love is an invisible particle that unites us and makes us see ourselves, we will understand that nothing, no one and no poorly blown word can put an end to a true friendship.

I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL – by Veronica Pinheiro

"WE NEED TO LEARN TO GET INVOLVED WITH THE EARTH, WITH OUR RIVERS, FORESTS AND MOUNTAINS.
Involvement doesn't mean private interest in owning that river."
Ailton Krenak¹

It rained so much on the afternoon and evening of June 4 in the city of Rio de Janeiro that I lost count of the people who sent messages asking if the visit to Sugarloaf Mountain on June 5 would be cancelled. We got to the second immersion of the Ways of Knowing Journey: the children's encounter with the waters of Guanabara Bay. When the gathering was confirmed, there was no rain forecast for the day of the tour. The forecast changed, but I chose to trust the waters and the Sun. The gathering was not cancelled. I left home under heavy rain. We arrived at the school to find the children under heavy rain. However, I chose to trust the water and the Sun. 

Tania and Ericka, Sun and dream companions, went straight to the visitation site. "Veronica, it's not raining here. Lots of clouds." "Tell Sun we're counting on him, and the children will be out of school soon." After breakfast was served at the school, it was time to board the pink bus and meet our kind driver again. 

An unspoken agreement was made in Favela da Pedreira: If the pink bus is there, the children are going for a walk; therefore they must leave and return to the favela peacefully. The roads leading to the school are cleared so that our bus can pass, and we are watched from the moment we board the bus until we leave the complex. The children don't notice that the community also changes its routine somehow so they can experience joyful days. It was touching to see that the community and the parallel power are concerned about the well-being of children and teachers.

We left the school. It was no longer raining. "Let's go up and see the clouds; in cloudy weather we won't be able to see anything." I listened, but I didn't answer, because I trusted the waters and the Sun. On the way to the Sugarloaf Mountain, we crossed the Acari River. Our beloved river, who cuts through the entire school area. A wide river that listens to us. A river that bears witness to life and the terror imposed on the region. A river that still holds its charms, caymans and capybaras. The Acari River is one of the largest watercourses in Rio de Janeiro, and the reason for our walk². Acari is so strong that macrobiologically it has resisted until recently. We said goodbye to the river and continued our journey. We travelled 40 km to Sugarloaf Mountain. We climbed Urca Hill and Sugarloaf Mountain so we could see the waters of Guanabara Bay from above.

During the experience, the waters and the Sun welcomed us like welcoming loved ones. It wasn't raining and the clouds retreated to another place so that we could contemplate everything that could be seen from the heights. The Sun watched over us as we climbed and descended the hills, and the glow reflected in the waters enchanted the whole group. It was the first time I didn't see fear in the children's eyes. The children hugged each other and walked hand in hand. They smiled wide, long-lasting smiles. There were times when I swore I could see their smiles reflected in the sea. Some cried. Two of them cried a lot and couldn't say exactly why. Unlike the smiles, the cries were short and brief. I'm sure it was just the sea inside their chests that didn't want to be held back. 

We were 10 adults on the tour, and as we arrived there I realised that there would be no mediation. Each adult had four children to accompany. We walked very close together, it was party day. I didn't say much, nature doesn't need a mediator. The waters, the Sun, the Plants, the Birds, the Monkeys, the Wind spoke so much, so much, that I was surprised at how receptive they were. Everything caught the children's attention, the aeroplanes that landed right in front of us, the tourists speaking English, the little signs that one friend read to another who couldn't read. "It says the whale will be here until September" "Really! Is it today? Read it properly and see if there's a day." The whale didn't pass by on 5 June. 

A lot was healed in us that day. Some people are horrified to hear that education can heal. I learnt from the Quilombola and indigenous elders that everything can be healing: songs, words, food, hugs, advice. While we were on our way down, a helicopter landed on the Sugarloaf helipad. 

"Miss V, what does the helicopter want?" 

"It doesn't want anything, my son." 

"Miss V, is it a shooting?" 

"No. It's people out for a ride, they get on the helicopter to go for a ride and see the whole city from above."

The 11-year-old boy only knew about helicopters in the context of urban warfare. The police in Rio de Janeiro have a fleet of helicopters. The armoured aircraft are used in police operations, and the boys know that when there is a helicopter, the situation is worse than usual. They also knew about the news helicopter. But a tour helicopter? Not for travelling. That's because the city separates them. The city has rigid walls to exclude many and guard a few. Capitalism determines the meanings that signs will have within the same city: for my student, helicopter means danger; for tourists, fun. 

“But my observation about cities is that they act as a real energy sink." Ailton Krenak

"Miss V, are we in Europe?"

The question hurt my chest, not because of geographical lack of knowledge. But because this boy understood that he wasn't part of that Rio de Janeiro. But it was a day of celebrations and life encounters. Once again, the life present in nature, the same life that sustains the boy, embraced us. Suspended in the air, inside the cable car, we were just people, air, mountains, water, birds, Sun and water. The same boy cried while hugging the school principal. He told me that he won't forget to take care of nature."Miss V, I didn't know it was so beautiful." "You are nature, just like these mountains and the waters of the bay." 

This trip inaugurated another round of conversations at the school about people's lives and the life of rivers.

Oh, when we got off the cable car, the clouds covered the sky in that place. I asked the rain to wait for us to come home. It listened to us.

When the meaning of life was shifted to having things, we began to distance ourselves from Mother Earth. This marvellous mother who calls our attention, even to say: "Hey, you're alive". When a mother tells us off at home, she's not just telling us off so we don't mess up the house, she's telling us off to say: "You're alive". So that we don't become alienated from the meaning of being alive." (Ailton Krenak) 

Photos: Ericka Hoch

__________________

¹ "We traded our humanity for things." https://revistatrip.uol.com.br/trip-fm/ailton-krenak-trocamos-nossa-humanidade-por-coisas 

² “WHERE'S THE RIVER THAT WAS HERE?” https://selvagemciclo.org.br/diario-de-aprendizagens/#tab-1717677150043-1 

WALKING CONSCIOUSLY – by Cris Takuá

Art: Fabiano Kuaray    

     Ero Tori ('Make consciousness arise) 

     Ero Tori Tori 

     Ero Ta kua (Make the sound of knowledge reach afar)

    Ero Ta kua ta kua….

When we feel the teachings transmitted by the masters of knowledge, we realise that we are guided to learn how to place ourselves in the world, in relationship with everything and everyone around us. All beings have a deep interaction with the great web of life, from the moment they bloom in this world. We humans are imperfect beings, but we are capable of a transformation in order to reach Arandu, the sensitive wisdom of feeling our own shadow. But to do this, we have to be willing to walk consciously, feeling the sound of knowledge, which enables us to see beyond appearances. 

Children are sensitive beings, they observe every meaning of things. I have often seen children questioning adults for their contradictory attitudes. Reaching consciousness and walking consciously involves overcoming the contradiction in daily actions. I feel and see bees, ants, dogs, chickens and turtles with much more balanced sensibility and conscious actions than many humans.

The great mystery of life lies in going through the portal of what our eyes can see and diving into the infinite world of networks that connect the knowledge and practices which are the access codes to understanding. During the many years I taught in a school, I always encouraged my students to feel and be conscious of their awareness when walking, talking and manifesting themselves in the world. I wasn't always understood by them or by some leaders, who always thought I was trying to talk politics. What? Politics?

What might the politics of our own yards be if not to respect all life forms? The mountains, the rivers, the ants and the agoutis. Sowing the seeds of micro-politics is an enchanting but challenging endeavour. There have been centuries of deterioration of the Teko Porã, the good and beautiful way of Being in a territory. Walking consciously means allowing yourself to practise this delicate and sophisticated ancestral technology, the Good Living.

Photo: Anna Dantes

Since I left/was taken out of the conventional classroom, curiously, I've met children everywhere I've been, in workshops, conversation circles and experiences. Listening to them and perceiving the way they conceive the relationship between things, I am amazed at the ability children have to walk consciously, to feel the sound of everything that surrounds them. 

Children should be leaders in this world of so many unmemorised and unconscious humans!

Centuries have passed and our humanity has enslaved plants, fish and mountains in the name of delusional reason, which has come to judge and buy/discard everything that doesn't meet the established standards. Concerned with development, order and progress, human adults create laws and wage wars. 

Meanwhile, children all over the world are observing this out-of-sync situation and taking a stand regarding the ethics that permeate our involvement with life, rather than the development of living beings.

What ethics surround your everyday relationships?

In order to walk consciously and reach the sound of the understanding of things we must be silent and listen more to the children.

Photo: Vhera Poty

THIS WEEK I DID NOT RECEIVE ANY NOTES – by Veronica Pinheiro

The school is closed. No photos today. I haven't seen the children this week. The school is closed. Access is more difficult than usual. ‘Wear a badge’. ‘Wait before leaving the house’. Don't leave the house! 

We alternate between weeks of enchantment, euphoria, joy and fear. Diffuse danger. Concrete danger. This week I didn't receive any notes or hugs from little arms.

This week reminded me of my first days at the school. At the time, the reading room was still unavailable. In a colourful box, I put the books that I would read with the students in the classroom. I carried books for all the children in the box. Wherever I was with that box, there the reading room was. It was an exercise for me and the children to transform the place. The magic is always in the encounter. Once the reading circle was formed, we could be and do whatever we wanted.

In the first month of school, we read Manu e Mila, by André Alves, together. In a third grade class, I distributed the books to children aged 7 and 8. Whether they are literate in Portuguese or not, they all receive a copy of the book. If there's one thing that children who don't read do easily, it is to imagine. As long as we are not forced to frame what we think, we dream and we feel without grammatical rules, we rely very powerfully on our inner repertoire. The inner repertoire is a whole world that the child brings from home - games, beliefs, knowledge, flavours. Regular schools often ignore the lives that children live and work to make them do what the Common Core Curriculum expects of them.  

When I put books in children's hands, I tell them that even if they don't understand the words, they can read colours, drawings, symbols and lines. They can also pretend to be reading. They can even close their eyes and sleep while I read. Before anyone thinks the permission I give the children is absurd, let me give you some information: some students live in places where there are dances and parties that start at 9pm one day and finish at 8am the next. 

Before I start reading, I tell them everything that can be done. In an environment that specialises in saying what cannot be done, to be able to is a subversion. We read Mila and Manu aloud with sparkles in our eyes, the story of two friends who were looking for ‘JOY’. It was a delicate reading that planted beautiful thoughts in the children and in me. During the reading, I received a warning from the unit managers about a danger and that the children would not be allowed out of the classrooms. Corridors and toilets are our most vulnerable places. I remember finishing the story lying on the floor of the room because the shooting was very close. I remember sharing a care that I didn't know I was capable of sharing. I remember wishing with all my heart that I would never again see children lying on the floor to protect themselves from gunfire.

I also remember spending two hours in absolute silence when I got home; it was silence from the mouth outwards because inside there was a terrifying noise. It had been a long time since I had felt fear. Fear for myself, who had left the danger zone. Fear for the children who would be sleeping there. 

Four months after that episode, we were told to stay home. The school opened only one day that week, but the children didn't show up. I was there with paints, books and an artificial campfire. I bought a little LED fire that simulates real flames. An attempt to warm hearts frozen with fear. But the children weren't there. Sitting by the make-believe campfire, I heard the voice of a teacher who rarely speaks to me. She understood the invitation, we talked all morning, she told me about her classes and her career in schools. We discovered, because of the campfire, that we have many dreams in common. We somehow warmed each other up... I left the favela singing an old samba by Mr Nelson Cavaquinho. The same samba I used to sing when I was young and came home late from university. I used to sing it to scare away the fear of walking alone up the hill where I lived. I used to sing to warm up my heart and scare away fear, just like my grandfather taught me. On the last day of open school, I sang to get out of school.

"When I step on dry leaves

Fallen from a mango tree

I think of my school

And of the poets of my dear first station

I don't know how many times

I went up the hill while singing

The sun is always burning

And that's how I come to an end

When time tells me

I can't sing anymore

I know I'll miss it

Alongside my guitar

And my youth"

While I was writing this I received a message saying that we can return. May the days ahead be good.

Awrê

THE GRANNY OF THE WORLD: PARANA PINE – by Cris Takuá

Today I dreamt of the granny of the forests

The great teacher

Who knows the wise secrets 

Of the mystery's science of sciences.

In a few words she wove me in

Thoughts, revealing paths 

Guiding me and showing me the

Incredible delicacy that lives

In the simplicity of things.

My spirit flew and travelled

Valleys and mountains 

Danced, twirled and felt

The profound freedom that dwells 

In the sacred abode of secret spirits. 

There is no greater knowledge than Love!

Every day we are surprised 

With the revelations that emerge 

In the new dawn 

In the cold night I plunged in search of understanding

And to my surprise 

The great teacher was there 

Sitting on her sacred throne 

Waiting for me

In the long tails of a Parana Pine 

With her flute and her Maraca 

Just waiting for me to join her

To continue the lullaby 

And blow poetry to the four corners

In order to colour and massage

The beings of this Earth!

Tired and suffering 

For lack of understanding.

Oh walking beings, wake up

From this deep sleep 

And feel the tasty magic 

That lives in the singing silence

Of your thoughts!!!!

Photo: Carlos Papa Tekoa Yvyty Porã, RS

Thousands and thousands of years ago the sacred being Kuri, as the Guarani call the Parana Pine tree, came into being. This ancient tree is a plant grandmother of the world. Archaeological records show that the tree has existed and resisted for centuries. In all this time, the Parana Pines have witnessed a lot of struggle, resistance and also a lot of beauty; an active memory that they witness from the top of their green crowns.

In the last few weeks we have been witnessing a profound imbalance in Rio Grande do Sul, which has affected the lives of human and non-human beings: The overflow of the Guaíba River, the Taquari River and so many other rivers that, bruised by the harsh actions of humans, couldn't withstand the pressure of heavy rains and flooded, caused destruction and left their message.

The Ija Kuery, guardians of all things that inhabit this Earth, are tired of imperfect and maladjusted human beings. They have long been watching the heavy footprints of agribusiness, mining, disaffection and disrespect for life forms' diversity.

Pen engraving by Percy Lau, Arequipa, 1903
Rio de Janeiro, 1972. Source: Tipos e Aspectos do Brasil IBGE 1966

The temporal milestone, this anti-constitutional thesis that allows the revision and abuse of indigenous lands that have already been demarcated, is the ultimate in human ignorance and abuse, which cannot see that without a living forest there will be no life. The constant struggle and prayer to guarantee and protect the ancestral territories of indigenous peoples is precisely so that all forms of life can live: Parana Pines, Agoutis, Pacas, Bees, Amethysts, Mountains, Rivers and Fish.

Two nights ago, when I was concentrating in Opy'i, the prayer house, dialoguing and studying with the teacher plants, Kuri's spirit came to speak to me. She was very old and large. She calmly told me that she was up there watching all the confusion and suffering that was happening. She saw many of her plant and animal relatives drowning, dragged down by the mud and the raging water, and she could do nothing about it. She just watched it in silence, with her little arms as if they were in a form of greeting, bowing every day to the sun, the moon and life, asking for strength and protection. She spent some time showing me the great Parana Pine forests that once existed and which are now reduced to a few. She also showed me the power of petyngua, the Guarani pipe made from the knot of her pine, and how everyone who carries this pipe must respect it. She reminded me of beautiful images of women preparing pine nut flour with their pestles, old scenes where everything was deeply interconnected. Little by little, the images and her voice faded away and I gradually came back and, as I looked at the fire, which was intensely alive, I felt the need to get up and share with the young people who were with me that magical and very fruitful experience that I had felt, witnessed and learnt while immersed in deep visions. 

Painting: Jose Vera, RS

At dawn, reflecting on the night of study and learning, I remembered passages from Davi Kopenawa's book ‘The Falling Sky’....

"In the beginning the first white people's land looked like ours. It was a land where they were as few as we are now in our forest. Yet little by little their thought strayed onto a dark and tangled path. Their wisest ancestors, those whom Omama created and gave his words to, died. Their sons and grandsons had very many children in their turn. They started to reject the sayings of their elders as lies, and little by little they forgot them. They cleared their entire forest to open bigger and bigger gardens. Omama had taught their fathers the use of a few iron tools. They were no longer satisfied with them. They started desiring the hardest and most cutting metal, which Omama had hidden under the ground and the waters. They began greedily tearing minerals out of the ground. They built factories to melt them and make great quantities of merchandise. Then their thoughts set on these trade goods, and they became as enamoured with them as if they were beautiful women. They soon forgot the beauty of the forest. They told themselves: "Haixope! Aren't our hands so skilled to craft these things? We are the only ones who are so clever! We truly are the people of merchandise!' We will be able to become more and more numerous without ever lacking for anything! Let us also create paper skins so we can exchange them!" They made money proliferate everywhere, as well as metal pots and boxes, machetes and axes, knives and scissors, motors and radios, shotguns, clothes, and sheet metal.' They also captured the light from the lightning that fell to the earth. They became very satisfied with themselves. By visiting each other from one city to the next, all the white people eventually imitated each other. So the words of merchandise and money spread everywhere on their land. This is what I think. By wanting to possess all this merchandise, they were seized by a limitless desire.' Their thought was filled with smoke and invaded by night."

(Davi Kopenawa, 'Merchandise Love' in The Falling Sky) A Queda do Céu)

Parana Pine rock painting, Pirai do Sul, PR

READING THE EARTH - by Veronica Pinheiro

I remember the conversation we had with clay at the Cosmovisions of the Forest conference on 13 May 2023 at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio). The gathering intertwined the Ore ypy rã - Tempo de Origem and Selvagem projects in a day of exhibitions and activities with songs, dances and conversations. In front of a Marajoara ceramic vase, Francy Baniwa began to talk about how Baniwa women talk to clay, who is a very ancient and sacred being. Clay is also sacred where I come from. I remember the red clay that covered the whole community and how we used to touch our hands to the ground and to our hearts before dancing or playing capoeira. At home, clay was our grandma; our original cradle and ultimate lap. Clay was only harvested when needed. I took this to the clay workshops.

Walking through the Costa Barros neighbourhood, where the school is located, between gullies and shacks, the cracking of the ground caused by rain, landslides or the action of man reveals the colours that lie in the earth. Textures and shades of brown and reddish hues colour and reveal the soil's physical, chemical and mineralogical properties. While planning the workshops on planting fruit species at Nhe'ëry with Gerrie Schrik, I was asked the following question: What is the soil like at the school? Not having the technical answers, I was able to talk in detail about what I saw. And I could see the colours of the earth in the excavations and gullies. Looking at the soil is a practice I try to pass on to the children.

"Nobody analysed the soil, we knew the soil just by looking at it. Just by looking at the soil we knew what to plant. We knew the vegetation. On a soil that produces a lot of native legumes, we planted beans; on a soil that produces a lot of native grasses, we planted maize and rice. It's a cosmic language. It's simple. You don't need to analyse the soil, because soil already tells you what it is willing to offer." Nego Bispo

The soil speaks. We spent a week at school looking at the ground. Children and I. Tracks of dirt around the school that hadn't been covered by cement were the texts of the week. In class, the children and I read and talked about the ‘Earth Letter’. Interestingly, the children don't even know what a letter is anymore. They write little notes to me on pieces of paper, but they call the note a message. I explained what a letter was, what it was for and how it was composed. ‘Can the Earth write a letter?’, ‘No! It doesn't have arms or hands. She must have dictated it and someone wrote it down: like God with Moses". 

After a lot of chatting, we went out into the yard. It looked like an expedition: notebooks, pens, a branch to support us on the way up. The book was outside the reading room. We read the oldest book of all: we read the earth. For a while, we only observed the colours of the soil; in other moments, only the little insects and animals that lived there without anyone noticing. ‘Auntie, a lot of people live here!’, ‘I know, did you think the school only had furniture and books? The school is inhabited by living beings even when we're not there." Ants, lizards, spiders, plants, lots of birds. The first graders were amazed. They didn't know that so many different birds used to visit that yard in the late afternoon. We sat in silence in the middle of the court after the story had been told. I told them that they would be receiving visitors. Winged, colourful, singing visitors. I had the feeling they were the same birds that usually wake me up at home. They're certainly not the same birds, but it's nice to think that they accompany me to Pedreira. 

I tried to talk to the old gentleman who is always planting on a piece of land at the top of the hill. He's certainly the best person to talk to about the planting and earth pigment workshops. He has a daily relationship with the soil: I see it when I walk past his yard at 7am. In a region with the second lowest human development index, there is a man who is full of green. Man-plant-soil suspended and hidden in the green on the edge of the asphalt. While food insecurity circulates daily among the local population, this man, who has not disconnected from the land, cares for and is cared for. We've arranged to visit him, we intend to arrive with a basket of delicacies, and in some way be kind to those who gently tread on the earth.

We also intend to bring him a picture painted with pigments prepared using soil from the territory and the school, and somehow establish a dialogue based on our common cradle: our relationship with the land. The workshops are initial movements, they are seeds. By germinating the seeds, some memories of life are awakened. The awakened life is in the territory, in the memories stored in the earth and dormant in the bodies. By establishing a partnership with a regular school, we dreamed up the idea of living schools in urban and peripheral environments. Our proposal is to strengthen the territory, the knowledge and life practices that exist there. In this movement, we try to identify who are the guardians of good living; who are the beings who, in the midst of so many imposed difficulties, maintain practices that sustain ancestral cosmologies.

There is no single model of workshop that can be applied to every school and territory. We have shared natural paint workshops in other moments. For the children at the Escragnolle school, we started with the ‘Earth Letter’ and worked our way up to pigments and paints. When I invited them to learn more about the place where they live, I repeatedly heard stories of violence and fear. I asked them if they knew where the paints in the workshop came from. Some children suspected that the paint was clay. ‘It looks like paint, but it smells like earth’. I asked them if they knew that the soil in the area around the school was a soil full of colours. I asked them if they knew the kind man who managed to have a different way of being and living in the favela. Children, like birds, know a lot. The little ones gave me his name and a possible time for visiting him. 

The children said they hadn't realised how important it was to know about soil, plants and the backyard. During the week the children gave me gifts of soil, annatto and pigmented flowers. Gifts from the children of Pedreira. Perhaps the most beautiful I've ever received.

Now we're mapping the favela's green paths. The colours of the earth in the school yard paint in yellow and in shades of red the maps of life in Pedreira.

Photos: Wagner Clayton

BODY – HOME – TERRITORY - by Cris Takuá

Art by Cris Takuá

Our body is a territory

É casa, é morada ancestral

It is home, ancestral dwelling

Our home is the forest

And through it a portal we cross

Our territory is the riverbank,

It is mountain and mangrove

We're the tangle of a web

of natural colouring.

The forest pulses 

and the sacred beings living in it,

in the midst of the gale, are watching

Respecting the spirits of the forest

Should be the principle in the beginning

of the transmission of lores 

and knowledge 

of the world today we live in.

Art by Kaue Karai Tataendy

By weaving worlds we learn to relate to the spaces that surround us. Since the first home that welcomes us in our mothers' wombs, we begin to realise and feel the dimension of the many territories we inhabit. We are conceived in this great web of relationships, with ways of thinking and existing that are connected to an ancestral memory, a collection of knowledge and practices that inhabits our bodies and is present in many layers. The body, home, territory, this world of deep connections is undergoing significant changes due to the process of mechanisation of relationships. Artificial intelligence, which is increasingly present in human life and interaction, is causing ancestral communication tools such as telepathy, intuition and dreams to be silenced in the daily lives of many beings.

Our great dwelling place, our sacred home, is the forest. The forest is not only present inside our house, but in the waterfalls, in the mountains, in all the spaces where the tekoa is set up. The tekoa is the territory where we live, where we plant, where we create, where we play, where it is possible to live together in a collective way, in a true way. I feel that our whole body, the way we place ourselves in the world, is being called for a transformation, a reorientation. Regardless of our origins, our political, philosophical or epistemological positions, we need to have an ethical commitment to life and thus be able to balance the breath of love that comes out of our words with the rhythm of our steps as we walk. This is the great challenge we have to overcome in order to move forward with coherence and serenity, without being constantly contradictory in our actions.

Art by Jera Mirim

Throughout history, humankind has relied on a reason that does not include other beings in the dialogues. Humans have created, invented, modified and destroyed the balance of nature. And they have forgotten to realise that the ants, the bees, the wind, the mountains, the rivers and all the beings that live here on this planet, visible and invisible beings, animal beings, plant beings, mineral beings, they too share a collectivity, a dynamic of life that pulses within this territory which is the great planet Earth. But we humans insist on wanting to be bigger, on wanting to be more forward-thinking and masters of this whole world. And, in the name of this, we cause all the imbalances in this humanity that we believe we are.

We can't dissociate ourselves from nature, because we are nature and everything is intertwined. No human being can live and survive if there is no water to drink or clean air to breathe. The whole capitalist and colonising process, in many places around the world, has imposed a way of seeing and thinking of time, and this has affected the processes of knowledge transmission. There is a monoculture that governs food, that governs epistemologies and the processes of healing and illness. This needs to be understood in such a way that individuals realise we are nothing more than a tiny grain in this great web that connects life. When I think about home, body and territory, I realise how much we humans are gifted with a great potential that is our own mind. Our thoughts are capable of enormous development and creativity, which we can provide only to ourselves or redirect to learning.

Ants, bees and plants are very intelligent beings, just like all mineral beings. Every day they pulsate, transform and recompose themselves. And we humans are constantly dividing ourselves into categories, ethnicities, skin colour and social classes. But we are all human and we have all been put in this same boat, which is this sacred dwelling, this home-territory where we live every day and where we share struggles and dreams, expectations and desires. Getting used to this and seeing clearly and fully is the mission that each of us carries in this territorial dwelling. With our sensibilities, with our cultural and spiritual specificities, we are able to reach out to this great community that inhabits the planet Earth home, and thus reactivate care and awareness to our own body, mind and spirit.

Art by Alexandre Wera Popygua

APPROPRIATIONS AND REREADINGS will be allowed – by Veronica Pinheiro

“‘I don't have any prospects regarding a new world. I don't believe in a new world. I believe that we will have to decide what we are going to do with the one we are ruining. The idea of a new world is part of a logic that suggests that when my shoe is finished, I buy a new one.’"
Ailton Krenak

The year: 2024. The two reflections came to me on the same day: the first, a video, from which I transcribed an excerpt of Ailton Krenak's interview; the second, an open call announced by the Municipal Multilanguage Exhibition, from which I copied the phrase that gives this text a title. 

This week's diary would be about the workshop ‘Colours and earth - pigments and painting’. However, on the last day of the week, while I was still working, I received the open call for submissions to the 4th Municipal Multilanguage Exhibition. My task was to understand how we could register our school and the work we are developing for the exhibition. I don't know if you do it, but when I read calls I pay attention to the small details. There were so many pedagogical guidelines added to a bunch of acronyms and general and specific objectives... I'll admit here that I'm wary about laws, guidelines and pedagogies. I'm more interested in the practices, the unsaid, the established things, the choices and the breath of the proposals. At first, I read it to understand which artistic-pedagogical language we could enrol in (dance, theatre, music and/or visual arts). Then I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd read.

The theme of the exhibition – Brazil and its Brazils, the influence of originary peoples in the formation of our Brazilian cultural identity, in the light of Law 11.645¹ – has a series of agendas to fulfil. There were so many beautiful demands (competences for the 21st century²; conjugating the 4Cs³; working on transversal themes⁴; including the socio-environmental issue and the Sustainable Development Goals – ODS⁵; broadening the perception of society and of the world; focussing on the 2030 Agenda with the Diversity Coordination⁶; not forgetting the Common Curriculum Base – BNCC⁷; implementing Law 11.645) that I got dizzy. 

This text could have ended with the title. However, I invite everyone to think about how we are going to repair this world that we are ruining. ‘Appropriations and/or rereadings will be permitted’. This sentence jumped out at me and I automatically said: ‘I don't understand’. Or I understood everything. The sentence (or phrase; I am intentionally choosing the word SENTENCE) written on page 15 of the call says so much about the ethnic-racial relations proposed by the institutions and about their pedagogical choices. But institutions are made up of and represented by people. And as people, together we can think of possibilities for rewriting perspectives and realities.

There is no neutrality in a text. I learnt, studying linguistics, that ‘a monster sleeps' in every sign. If I pay attention to the unsaid, how can I ignore the said? The written? 

‘The body of a black or indigenous person is impregnated with culture and memory, it carries the marks of pain and suffering that colonisation has inflicted. These skins are not costumes. Therefore, cultural appropriation is not homage, it is symbolic violence exercised subtly or explicitly. Nobody has the right to wear a headdress and paint their face while supporting indigenous genocide. A white man can't sing samba and keep spouting racism.’⁸

Someone will surely try to explain and provide context to justify the sentence that hurt my eyes so much. They may explain, but I'm not the one who values documents and papers. My people keep memories and knowledge in chants, in practices and in prayers. I'm not the one who demands that treaties and agreements be validated in writing and protocolled. It's the institutions. It is the institutions that say ‘what is written goes’. And it was written:

‘Appropriations will be allowed’

And if it's written, it can be rewritten. May we, from 2024 onwards, collectively rewrite the paths and possibilities of coexistence. Every culture is the result of years of social and natural interactions; therefore, the affirmation of identity is an organic movement. It's important to listen more; for example, to listen to how indigenous people would like to be presented and represented. Many people don't realise that a graphic is not just a painting; many others don't know that a chant can bring back ancient memories and words of healing. In 2024, may we understand that the best way to honour a tradition is by strengthening territories and respecting all the manifestations of life that are present in them.

¹http://portal.mec.gov.br/index.php?id=12990&option=com_content&view=article#:~:text=A%20Lei%20n%C2%BA%2011.645%2F08,Afro%2DBrasileira%20e%20Ind%C3%ADgena%E2%80%9D.

²https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000234311

³The 4C's concept was presented by the National Education Association (NEA) as a complement to the activities of ‘21st Century Skills’, a 21st century education movement that aims to capacitate educators to advance in their own practice. The 4Cs are: critical thinking; collaboration; communication; creativity.

⁴ The transversal themes defined by the Brazilian National Curriculum Parameters are: Ethics, Cultural Plurality, Environment, Health, Sexual Orientation, Local Issues. http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br/images/implementacao/contextualizacao_temas_contemporaneos.pdf

⁵ There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (ODS) defined by the United Nations. http://portal.mec.gov.br/component/tags/tag/objetivos-de-desenvolvimento-sustentavel

⁶ https://www.gov.br/mec/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/2023/setembro/instituida-comissao-nacional-para-os-objetivos-de-desenvolvimento-sustentavel

⁷ http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br/

⁸Rodney WILLIAM, Apropriação cultural. São Paulo, Pólen, 2019.

AMONG RIVERS, MOUNTAINS AND CHILDREN - by Cris Takuá

Collective art.
Photo: Cris Takuá

Rivers Life

‘Rivers are visible veins 

There are underground Rivers

and flying Rivers.

Rivers as arrows of memory

Neurotransmitters 

Rivers Mycelia Neurons

Rivers are not Rivers, they are us

They are everything.

They are Earth's body evident signs

Seeing brings the sight.

The Earth's skin is the sky.’

*** Anna Dantes, Puerto Berrio, 

 Colombia - May/2024 ***

‘Acting for the living’ residency, on the Magddalena river basin. Puerto Berrio, 3 May 2024.
Photo: Digo Fiães

Rivers are the veins of the Earth, they are spirits that meander as snakes, sliding between rocks and crystal-clear waters. They flow from ancient mountains and caress our skin with the possibility of life. All over the world and throughout history, humans have failed to respect the existence of rivers. They have changed their course, contaminated their bodies with mining waste, pesticides and rubbish – lots of rubbish.

Today, children are thinking about it and, above all, they are feeling the harsh consequences of the bruises in the deep layers of the Earth. Through their sensitivity, they are mediating conflicts between worlds and times, aiming to regenerate links with their ancestral territories.

One possible way that has been emerging is to feel and think about the river, in the face of all its wounds and complexities. And then sing to, talk to and listen to the river's profound messages. These are challenges that sensitive beings are managing to achieve.

Fotos: Photos: Lina Cuartas and Cris Takuá Cris Takuá

Walking along the banks of the Madalena River in Puerto Berrio, Colombia, at the beginning of May, I recalled old memories of children playing and little plants sprouting on the banks of the world's rivers. I connected with the sacred Guaíba in Rio Grande do Sul, so tired and bruised by all the human confusion, and something resonated in me in the form of a song....

                    Yxyry Porã Mbaraete 

                    Yxyry Porã Mbaraete 

                     Yxyry reo Para Guaxu aguã.

                     Yxyry reo Para Guaxu aguã.

                        💦💧🩵💦💧

A song for the beautiful Rio Madalena, Guaíba, Taquari, Rio Doce and Paraopeba.

Mountains are like grandmothers - they embrace and protect us. Many waters flow from the top of the mountains, which is why they have deep connections with the rivers that flow into the sea.

They are paths!

Rivers, Mountains and Children 

Beings who teach us.

We need to listen more 

And respect the lives of these sacred beings!

Photo: Maria Inês

SUMAHUMANS – by Veronica Pinheiro

“Yuxin dacixunuan punyan daci we tsaua”, 

"All the yuxin sat on all the branches of the sumauma tree".

At 7.30am on May 7, 2024, the principal opened the school gate as she did every day. Instead of 'good morning', we heard: ‘I couldn't sleep with so much joy! I wanted it to be morning so I could come to school.'

Once the sentences were pronounced, we heard a sequence of voices, as in a chorus: ‘Me too’. ‘Me too'. ‘Me too’.

I didn't reinforce the chorus, but I couldn't either.

It was the day of the first immersion of the Ways of Knowing Group. Our destination: Rio de Janeiro's Botanical Garden. In this movement of awakening memories, we provide encounters. Some are between species, others are not. For our immersion, we thought about children meeting trees. We had a script lined up: receive the children at school; breakfast; board the bus; arrive at the Botanical Garden; visit the museum and the Mbaé Kaá exhibition; walk in the garden; picnic; meditation and theatre games; return to school; and lunch. A long, sensitive line marked out our expectations in green.

If ‘there is only experiencing and the rest doesn't concern us’¹, what happens when we sensitively bring the urban beings we are closer to nature, which we also are? We will probably reach the last diary of the year, in December, without an answer, but this question moves us. Over and over we talk about sowing; about germinating words. In an ideal scenario, those who plant a field know what they're going to harvest and when they're going to harvest it. What about those who plant dreams? Gatherings? Who plants water, trees and forests? 

Taking children to the Botanical Gardens so they can find the trees is not a pedagogical strategy. It's much simpler: every child has the right to know what nature is and to have access to the manifestations of the natural world. 

‘Miss V, that's not a shot. It's fireworks. Relax.’ ‘Miss V, that noise is from the news helicopter, the police helicopter has another sound.' In the Pedreira favela, many children under the age of 10 can recognise the sounds of horror and war. But they don't know the sounds of the wind meeting the treetops. On May 7, 2024, the day of the tour, the favela dawned quiet and the sun came out early and warm, even though it was autumn. The last Tuesday tasted like a party candy.

We were 42 people in total from the school². 6 from the Ways of Knowing Group³. 1 bright pink bus and 1 very kind driver. The colour of the bus is strategic, we need to get in and out of the favela safely. The pink bus has become a beloved character among children and adults, it has already earned a name and its visit is being awaited by other classes in the school.

The visit to the garden began and ended in front of the Sumauma tree (Ceiba pentandra). At the beginning, the work ‘Sumauma: Crown, House, Cosmos’, by Estevão Ciavatta with narration by Regina Casé, virtually immersed us in the Sumauma. We were greeted by the Museum's education team; Daiani Araújo and Thalyta Sousa tenderly welcomed the children and led the whole group to Sumauma. Everyone In the projection room, without exception, listened with their hearts to the words of the tree. For the first time, many of them realised that a tree has a lot to say about itself and about life. Some hardly blinked, others listened with their eyes closed. All of them smiled with lips and eyes.

‘Miss V, draw us the map of how to get from school to here. I want to bring my family here to listen to the tree.’

‘I'll make a map from the Pavuna metro station to here. It'll be very easy to get here.’

We climbed the wooden stairs in small groups of 7 people. Around the Viva Viva Garden installation, on the second floor and inside the Mbaé Kaá exhibition, we had a few more conversations about plants and the relationship between indigenous peoples and them. Guarani art, nature, science, Barbosa Rodrigues and the windows of the building. After talking about the exhibition, the children ran to the window. There I realised that the windows of the school classrooms have no view. The collective gesture of looking out brought a sense of disquiet to the group. Many encounters were about to happen. Hugs between the children and museum educators wrapped up the first part of the tour.

In the Garden, the children looked in every possible direction. They saw with their eyes, ears, feet, skin and hearts. They paused to admire the fresh water flowing down from the rocks. Pause to feel the freshness of the water. For a minute or more I didn't hear any voices; hearts and mouths fell silent so that the eye could see properly. After the silence that greeted the waters, euphoria gradually overtook the group again. ‘I'm not going to wash this hand any more. I touched the water from the waterfall with it.’ I didn't say anything. The boy believed he had touched the water, little did he know that the water had touched him. Now he carries fresh water within, whether he washes his hand or not is a detail.

‘Miss V, the bamboo just spoke!' Before I could comment...

‘Why are there no pandas up there?

Before I could say anything... a giant fish, the Black Pacu that lives in the Frei Leandro Lake became more interesting than the answer. We walked for a few minutes, crossed the small bridge and went through the gate to the children's playground. There we had a snack and meditation break. We sang to the Earth. With our eyes closed, we were trees. Roots. Trunk. Branches. Leaves. Our tour was coming to an end, it was time to return to the bus. We took a different route inside the garden, as we couldn't leave without finding the Sumauma tree planted in the Garden. 

With very deep roots that bring water to the surface even in the dry season, the Sumaúma is considered the mother of the forest and can reach 70 metres, which is equivalent to a 24-storey building. Where I come from, the kapok tree is home to Iroko (from the Yoruba Íròkò), who is the guardian of ancestry and the ancestors, the centre of nature and the dwelling place of all the Orishas; the first tree to be planted on Earth. Many indigenous peoples claim that the large sapopemas of the kapok tree represent a portal to another world. A sacred tree for many forest peoples, a great mother who protects everyone. The Huni Kuï say ‘Yuxin dacixunuan punyan daci we tsaua’, ‘all the yuxin sat on all the branches of the samaúma’. In a pluriversal space of dialogues, the kapok tree is all this and more.

I read an EMBRAPA document on the Sumauma tree and thought that the team who wrote the text for the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply should have visited Rio's Botanical Garden together with the children, because the government technicians were only able to present multiple uses and economic alternatives of the tree. However, just like the babas and shamans, the children connected with the tree. Dreams and sap mixed together. As our circle formed around the buttress roots, green memories were awakened. In the time of dreams, my little companions dreamt of being a tree and living in a garden. Dreams are sap, a liquid that circulates and keeps circular time. In the time of saps, 10-year-old Angélica came to the following conclusion: ‘We found the tree, we went inside it and now we are SUMAHUMANS’.

Returning to the question that moves us: what happens when we sensitively bring the urban beings we are closer to the nature we also are? According to Angélica, we can become a bit of a tree.

¹in Mbaé Kaá o que tem na mata: A Botânica Nomenclatura Indígena, by João Barbosa Rodrigues. Dantes Publishing House, 2018.

² 37 4th grade students, 3 teachers, the pedagogical coordinator and the assistant principal.

³ Luany mediating the visit to the Garden; Paula Novaes mediating the breathing activity and theatre games; Tania Grillo mediating the Mbaé Kaá exhibition, and 3 members of the volunteer team: Bia Jabor, Eliane Brígida and Evellyn.

Photography: Éricka Hoch; 

Coordination: Veronica Pinheiro .

TOBACCO, THE MASTER OF KNOWING – by Cris Takuá

Photo: Carlos Papá

Ancestral healer

The blow of the pipe

The blow of snuff

The blow of love

Of words

Of songs that 

Explode from the inner universe 

Of the intimate restlessness

Of our Being...

The blow cleanses

Relieves and dispels

Sorrows and anxieties.

Evil exists!

But it is nothing when compared 

To the power that dwells in the smoke 

Of sacred medicines

Which through their blowing 

Purify and transform everything 

The blow that, like an impulse

Comes out in the form of moving words 

Echoing through the four corners of this universe

In profound moments.

We need to sing more

Speak more words of love

We need to blow healing to everything and everyone 

Illusion persists in chasing 

Human matter  

But true Love dwells 

In the sensitive wisdom 

Of the little things

Of the little acts 

Of the deep teachings

Of dreams and children

That reveal with each new dawn 

The extraordinary beauty 

Of being and existing fully.

The blowing flooded my soul

On that silent, cold night

And through the blowing 

I saw your beautiful, serene and peaceful form 

Showing me the ways 

Revealing mysteries to me

Attuning my senses 

The blowing relieved me

Healed me

Made me happy

And made me poetise at dawn 

The songs of good living!!!!!

(Blowing of words received at dawn after a healing ritual with tobacco)

Photo: Cris Takuá

Thousands and thousands of years ago, in the midst of darkness, life and all the beings that live around us came into existence. Every plant, animal and mineral being are spirits who live together in a deep tangle of knowledge, like a great web in which everything is connected. All that lives on Earth has their guardian and owner. The Guarani call them Ija, the Maxakali Yamiyxop, the Huni Kuin Yuxibu, the Yanomami Xapiri. Each people names this beings and maintains with them a relationship of deep communication in the spiritual world.

Disrespecting these beings can lead us to illness. That's why children need to be taught from a young age to ask permission where they go, to know how to enter and leave the forest, the waterfall, the mountain. Respecting these spirit beings means living a good life in balance and health.

There are some plants of power, also called teachers, who show us the paths, putting us in dialogue with spirit beings and also healing us when we are affected by some spiritual ailment.

Many indigenous cultures in all parts of the world have historically made use of tobacco for their healing practices. This sacred plant is present in ancient cultures on practically every continent. Some use it in pipes which, through the puffed smoke, provide spiritual communication. Others blow snuff. It can also be chewed or taken as tobacco water for purging, providing deep cleansing. It is also used externally as a poultice. There are many uses for this being.

Ailton Krenak, in Notebook Selvagem Entering the World - A Talk about 'Teacher Plants'1, dialogues with Carlos Papá, saying: "I learned to do something that I have not heard anyone talk about, which is to read tobacco. I know there are people who read coffee grounds, who read movements in water. But I just tried this thing of reading the message of broken unused tobacco, just watching it show me things. It was very good. It is likely that other people have also lived this experience in other contexts, of tobacco being this voice of health, this active image. It’s not an inert thing, it’s a living thing. Of course whoever makes ritual use of it, the everyday use of it, has other experiences."

We realise, however, that this sacred being has been treated disrespectfully by human societies. Children grow up fearing tobacco because they are taught that it kills, causes cancer or lung problems. This statement is loaded with ignorance about the use of this plant, because for many cultures that use tobacco ritualistically, tobacco heals.

Tomio Kikuchi, in his book Essência do Oriente2 [The Essence of the East], says: "According to the Single Principle of the order of the Infinite Universe, that is, the Ying-Yang practical dialectic, smoking tobacco is classified in the Yang category... It must be understood that smoking is yanguinising oneself. Cancer, being explosive Yinguinisation and continuous dilation (dominated by the centrifugal force of Ying, dilation) will be thwarted in its development by the absorption of constricting Yang smoke. This can lead to its regression and finally to reabsorption... we can state with complete certainty that smoking tobacco is recommended above all for cancer sufferers and for all those who wish to strengthen their immunity against cancer."

Reflecting on the profundity of plant beings in this intimate relationship with our lives means delving into the science of the forest, which for centuries has been hidden and ignored by capitalist and Western science. There is a knowledge that governs very sensitive communications made through ancestral technologies such as telepathy, intuition and dreams. The great praying men and women, the healers, spend times of their lives in a process of preparation to achieve understanding in order to dialogue with the teacher plants and make healing possible for humans.

Ainda no diálogo Entrar no mundoStill in the 'Enter the World' dialogue, together with Ailton Krenak, profound thoughts were brought up by Carlos Papá so that we could feel the delicate relationship between tobacco and the Guarani people.

“The petyngua takes the messages directly from Nhanderu. And Nhanderu will guide you. This smoke you release, it takes from the inside to the outside the thoughts, the feelings. This smoke will hover over the entire universe. It will mix with the wind. It will mix with the scent of the environment. With this, you will become increasingly stronger. But you will understand that better when you have your kids. Now, you won’t get a thing, even if we say it, you won’t get it. But this wisdom will come little by little, when you have kids. Through the tobacco and smoke, more messages came. Through the inebriation of tobacco, I started to perceive and understand the codes from the smoke as one puffs it. The smoke started to open the codes. I ended up understanding those codes. And ancient words came, words as if great pajés were manifesting. I felt huge strength, I felt like a giant. I couldn’t feel my feet on the ground anymore. I felt… It seemed as if I had the ability to fly. Thus, I began to realise that the petyngua is a healing instrument that makes you understand all the codes of time. That was also when I understood what we call teko axy. Teko axy means imperfect body. Wind brings and takes away messages. The smoke of pety, which is the tobacco, when we think, this smoke takes our thought and hovers, so that the wind can bring answers."

Through these thoughts I invite everyone to strip away the layers of mental formatting we've received since childhood. May we begin to rethink our relationships with the dark, with the Sun, with the rain, the wind, tobacco, coca and so many beings that we have unlearned to respect and with whom we can certainly live in harmony. Industrialisation has captured some teacher plants, and it's up to each of us to relearn how to relate to each of them.

Photo: Cris Takuá

FROM SUN TO SUN – by Veronica Pinheiro

Photo: Wagner Clayton                      

Every MUNTU (human being) is the living Sun, perceived as a "power", "a phenomenon of perpetual veneration, from conception to death" and beyond. Once brought into the physical world, a sacred task begins (the most important for African civilisations): to take care of this MUNTU so that it shines like the midday sun.¹

Note: the African cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo, presented by Dr Fu-Kiau, presents caring for children as an art that needs to be honoured.

Thinking of the school world, being a children's teacher is an activity considered less prestigious in Brazilian society; an activity generally carried out by women and by people with low purchasing power. There is an established hierarchy among education professionals and those who teach in Early Childhood Education and Primary Education are disrespected within their own category. It's common for a university professor to take offence when asked which school he works in. "School? I don't work in a school. I'm a professor at so-and-so university."

Curiously, many teachers who publicly present themselves as decolonial (or counter-colonial) are attached to hierarchical European thinking, which sees early childhood and primary education as a place of less intellectual prestige. 

Professor Jacqueline Siano was present at my master's qualifying exam and she remarked: "You're researching Afro-Pindoramic confluences and counter-colonial practices in education. You need to go back to school!" 

I'm back. 

I come back pregnant with paths and possibilities. I carry in my heart some ideas to postpone the end of the world. Some say I'm coming back pluriversalised. I say I'm coming back populated. Populated by beings, narratives, times and spaces. I've been walking with more and more companions. On this return, many memories have been awakened in the body of flesh and in the body of memory. Among these memories, I have met and awakened solar memories.

Who is the Sun? How many stories do we know about its origin, the origin of the world and its role as a vital source of energy?

I carried two solar memories: the one from home, repeated in verse and daily practice, told me that we were like the Sun; the one from school said that the Sun is a star located in the Milky Way, the closest star to planet Earth and the largest in the entire Solar System. The school said that it was impossible for me to be a Sun. Since the school is authorised to say what is right and wrong, I forgot that I was a Sun and stuck with the school's version. This reductionist view of existence erases suns in broad daylight. 

Kuaray (Guarani); Abe (Desana); Mãyõn (Maxakali); Kamoi (Baniwa); Sol (Portuguese); Bari (Huni Kuin); Pawa (Ashaninka); Wei (Macuxi) are more than words used to designate the Sun; they are solar epistemologies. Generative words, accompanied by life and worlds. I have a special liking for narratives that begin with "There was no world before". This time before time existed brings profound teachings about caring for and maintaining existence. Origin myths don't exist to feed the ears of the world, but to vibrate life. 

Awakening solar memories, some voids were filled with listening and research; soon the Ciclo Sol [Sun Cycle] will present a series of talks about the Sun². Thoughts from home have reappeared in books and theses. 'Deixa meu Sol aceso' [Let my sun light up], my father's talk, shows traces of an ancient philosophy, brought to Brazil by black people during the Atlantic crossing between the 16th and 19th centuries (human trafficking promoted by Portugal is the most accurate term). In Bantu-Kongo thinking, four great "suns" govern the processes of formation and change. The first (Musoni Sun) is the Sun of "going to", of all beginnings; the second (Kala Sun) is the Sun of all births; the third (Tukula Sun) is the Sun of maturity, leadership and creativity; the fourth (Luvèmba Sun) is the Sun of the last and greatest change of all, death¹. 

I've never used the word "sun" in the plural as much as I have in recent days. Plural in meanings and existences. Coexistences that are continually forming, changing and expanding. From sun to sun, if we think of the Bantu-Kongo formation solar process, the Ways of Knowing Group is on the second sun. We are being born. Being born and proposing births. To this end, we hold weekly planning and study meetings (with people from the Selvagem team); we meet monthly with the teachers from the partner school and with the group's volunteers. 

Photo: Wagner Clayton

Our last breakthrough was to receive a visit from ceramicist Angélica Arechavala (a volunteer who accompanied the Children's Group and now supports the Learning Group). It may sound simple, but the school is located in an unfavourable area for visitors. Our idea is to strengthen partnerships and create an organic network between territories, which includes bringing people from outside to meet the school community and taking the school community to visit other places. 

In order for another living Sun to be included in the mediation of the ceramics workshops, we had the support of the school, which made people available to pick Angélica up and bring her by using the safest route. When I shared with a scientist the power of that 10-hour meeting, I got the following comment:

"Objects fold space-time, they feel this curve and move accordingly. You are a sun. The arrival of the ceramist brings a new sun in addition to you. It shifts the position of the first sun, and especially of the other little planets who are your pupils, hahaha, who were used to the previous configuration. That's why they were closer together, revolving and orbiting around you."

What was so powerful about this meeting? I was able to sit down and touch children who don't usually allow me to get too close. Children who know horror very closely trusted us at the last meeting. It was an environment of great trust and care: the principal, coordinators and teachers accompanied us at all times, in every space. Angélica's presence folded space-time, generating solar displacements. We are on the way to creating Tukula, the Sun of maturity. May Tukula arrive at a good time.

"The Sun walks slowly. Nevertheless, the Sun crosses the world" – African proverb

¹Fu-Kiau, Kia Bunseki and A. M. Lukondo-Wamba. KINDEZI: The Kongo Art of Babysitting. Black Classic Press, 2000.

²The Cycle is made up of 19 pluriversal speeches by Catarina Delfina Tupi-Guarani, Fabio Scarano, Moisés Piyãko (Ashaninka), Catarina Aydar, Carlos Papá (Guarani), Aliny Pires, Dua Busë (Huni Kuin), José Miguel Wisnik, Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Júlia de Carvalho Hansen, Francisco Baniwa, Aza Njeri, Anacleto Tukano, Carla Wisu (Dessano), Camila Mota, Marcelo Gleiser, Eduardo Góes Neves and Ailton Krenak.

THE WEAVE THAT WEAVES LIFE – by Cris Takuá

                          Art: Rita Huni Kuï

Web of life

We are a tangle of threads

of energetically interwoven feelings

Learning every day

how to weave the great web of life

The thread spins, spins, spins

The hand waves, weaves, weaves

The basis of the cloth 

That brings colour to this song

Between spiders' webs

And a profound vision

The arts come out, springing

Spinning, dyeing and cotton weaving.

The forest inspires the artist

Who meditates and is inspired

Mirroring in his beautiful creation

Messages to the world of respect and union.

Art brings the power of healing

The echo of politics in its creative and transformative 

Broad conception.

The artist is a sower,

In dialogue with bats, boas and spiders 

And through their ancestral knowledge and practices 

Touches the soul and decolonises the mind 

Shaped for centuries by a 

Monoculture of thought

Art has the possibility 

to metamorphose relationships

Between heaven and earth

Between the visible and the invisible

Showing us other paths 

Other possible realities

In an intellectual and creative fountain 

That dwells in the complex and beautiful existence 

of all the peoples who resist

with their songs, prayers, arts and philosophies.

The aesthetics of the forest is multiple

And dialogues with knowledge

That are not in books or museums

We are experiencing epistemic criminalisation.

Violence against ideas 

Against thinking 

And this reverberates in the earth's womb 

Wounded from sheltering us too long 

May we know how to awaken memories 

And weave good and beautiful words again 

And colourful fabrics to re-enchant life.       

 ********

Photos: Kawa Huni Kuï

Hand weaving is an art that has accompanied human development for many generations. Different peoples, depending on their culture, climate and region, have developed the process of weaving, spinning and dyeing to produce textiles. It's a form of ancestral language that transmits narratives full of meaning and enchantment. For some peoples, it was the Spider that taught them how to weave; for others, the Boa Constrictor; for others, Birds that make their nests by weaving fibres and branches. These are teachings often passed on from the spiritual world to humans.

For the Huni Kuï women, singing is part of the weaving process: while harvesting, taking off the seeds, beating and spinning the cotton fibres, the artisans sing asking for the power of the spiders to weave quickly, since, according to their cosmology, the thread picked by the spider comes out ready, without the need for beating or spinning.

Art: Rita Huni Kuï

For indigenous arts to continue to exist, there is a need for forests to exist. The way society has developed has led us to forget who we really are, and how to look deep into our essence in order to break through the barriers of the unknown. Along with this, the immense source of information in which we are immersed, the bad eating habits, the selfishness, the lack of love and common sense are disenchanting the humanity we dream of being.

One of the main pieces of knowledge that indigenous societies have and that makes their thinking valuable is precisely another way of conceiving the relationship between society and nature, between humans and non-humans, another way of conceiving the relationship between humanity and the rest of the cosmos. The existence of a balance, in which all beings interact and respect each other. Not just the older ones, the elders and shamans, but everyone; young people, children, ants, bees, trees, all forms of life.

Photo: Cris Takuá

For indigenous peoples, nature is the one who gives meaning to life. Everything has its balance. Like an immense web in which everything is interconnected, a living organism. Nature's power lies in directing us, showing us the path of light to follow in search of wisdom. Every sign we receive has a meaning for our lives. The song of a bird can indicate something, the thunder that passes by is a sign that something is about to happen, the ants in the middle of the road, the shapes of the clouds, the direction of the wind, in short, many presages are transmitted to us by the signs of nature who, delicately and wisely, guide us and teach us how to live well.

Art sprouts from a very ancient memory and the weaves that unfold from a creative process of imagination show the potential that dwells within each weaver. Between dreams and visions, shapes and signs are revealed, reflecting nature's origin of creation, pulsing the meaning of these relationships back to life.  

Photo: Carlos Papá

THE SUN DREAMT OF DAWNING – by Veronica Pinheiro

There are thousands and thousands in the middle of the dark
[A God] created the Sun
There are thousands and thousands in the middle of the dark
Created the water, the wind, the life on the planet
That’s why you can not be afraid of darkness.
Darkness is the mother of the whole universe, including God.
Darkness does not choose anyone.”
Guarani poetics narrated by Carlos Papá.1

Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

The following dialogue opens the way to the second Ways of Knowing Workshop, tought by Selvagem for the House of the Children:

• I need a dark classroom.
• We don't have a dark classroom. Can't you use the Reading Room with the lights off? 
• Yes I can. But it is not dark enough. And, if by chance someone turns on the room's light, we will lose this stage of the work.
• Kids are afraid of the dark.
• Kids are afraid of the relationship with the dark that has been created for them. It will work, they will be carrying the Sun inside their chest. We will build a good relationship with darkness.
• There is the former doctor's office. I don't know if it is dark enough, but I'll take you there.

The doctor's office was covered in layers of black fabric, kindly installed by teacher Wagner, making it our laboratory for images and sounds. The workshop was about the Sun and the relationship of life it establishes with the Earth. The word "relationship" will appear written or implied in all the diary entries, and it won't be by carelessness. The workshop, more specifically, was on cyanotype, a handmade photographic process created in the 19th century that uses iron salts to produce blue photographic prints. The room provided was initially for preparing the chemicals, sensitising and drying the paper in the first stage. And the sunlight was needed to print the images. The room then becomes a place to think about the things we feel when we are away from the light. For the children, light means good, a good thing; and darkness means bad, a bad thing. Between light and darkness, Euro-Christian-monotheistic thinking has created fixed distances filled with fears.

The choice of workshops is a great collection of concerns. We look for activities in which nature is the protagonist. And we make sure that protagonism is not confused with utility or resource. We make sure that nobody thinks we use sunlight to develop photographs. We don't use nature, we are sharing beings. In front of the sun, bodies dance - the bodies of water, humans, plants and salts. What is the point of activities where there is a synaesthetic boiling, which in the end only brings pleasure to humans and offends trees, water and the earth? 

Photo: Wagner Clayton

Before the handmade photography workshop, we talked about the texts that sunlight writes on the earth. We talked about darkness (where we all come from), photosynthesis, photos and synthesis. Three texts were shared with the schoolchildren: The Life of the Sun on Earth¹, Iori discovers the Sun and Taynôh, Ho Shamêh Tahe. A video about the sun was shown. We painted the Sun on cotton fabrics; we wove solar rays into bracelets; we made photographic records; we sensitised paper in the dark laboratory. To what end? To awaken solar memories.

School builds forgetfulness. For years, I woke up before the sun, arrived at school very early and returned home just as the sun was setting. I worked at school and taught about the things of life. At that time, I was so far away from the sun that my body forgot a lot. I hadn't learnt how to sweat or produce vitamin D. My body lacked sun.

If school builds forgetfulness, we tell stories to awaken the senses and the memories. 

"If you struggle to find the way, ask my son Kuaray, the little Sun, and he will know how to guide you."1

In dialogue with the Guarani myth, we learned a little about Kuaray, son of Nhanderu'i. We talked about walking and listening. 

The mother of the Sun stopped listening to the Sun at some point because she became furious when she was stung on the finger by a huge bumblebee.

Photo: Wagner Clayton

The little suns in front of me wanted to speak. I paused to listen to them. Those were silenced narratives. At that moment, I understood a little about their relationship with me and with the school. Some children without a mother, many without a father, having to be a Sun shining alone on Earth. Children aged between 5 and 7 talking about the guardianship council, abandonment and their desire to be a Sun.

When reading Iori discovers the sun, by Oswaldo Faustino, it's actually the Sun that discovers Iori. In Yoruba, Iori means "head that flies high". We exercised imagining who the Sun was and what he was doing on Earth. At the end of this activity, I received several suns painted and labelled with female names. I smiled and said out loud: "Did you learn this from the Macuxi?". "Wei" means "Sun". Sony Ferseck told me that in the culture of the Macuxi people, the sun is a feminine entity². The children understood the exercise of thinking about other ways of being in the world. They thought of the Sun as the one who feeds the plants every morning and said: "The Sun is a mother". I smiled. I'd never thought of that possibility. We converged. My little companions on the journey once again illuminated my path in Pedreira [Quarry]³.

From this book comes the sweetest sentence I've read all week: "The sun dreamed of dawning". 

I dreamt of the sun and we headed to the last reading and workshop.

Taynôh, Ho Shamên Tahe, the boy who was a hundred years old, is a multilingual book (Puri, Guarani Mbya, Portuguese and Spanish) by Aline Rochedo Pachamama (Churiah Puri). The reading was quick and generous. We were guided by fresh, deep water and talked about not planting forgetfulness.

During this meeting, we systematised all the stages of cyanotyping. After explaining everything that was going to happen and the results we were going to get, I skipped stages and broke agreements. The class followed the teacher in the dark room, and later in the Sun. But the impressions didn't come out on paper. Letícia, aged 10, remarked: "For things to happen on earth, all the elements need to be present. You sensitised the papers with water. You didn't use salts. 'Everything happens in presence', right?". "Yes. Everything needs to be present, Leticia."

Vitor, aged 10, concludes: "So let's go back to the dark and start all over again";

We started again. And when we put the papers in the sun, without skipping steps or absences, the sun wrote in blue on the papers. There were our blue photographs, depicting the leaves we had picked in the backyard.

Photos: Wagner Clayton

¹https://selvagemciclo.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/CADERNO79_PAPA_KANGUA.pdf

²Ferseck, Sony. Weiyamî: mulheres que fazem Sol. Boa Vista, RR: Wei Editora, 2022.

³Pedreira [Quarry] is the name of the complex of favelas where the school is located.

IN THE SEASON OF RAIN – by Cris Takuá

Photo: Cris Takuá

The smell of the dripping on the dirt ground 

Announcing the arrival of the rains

Brings gentle breezes

Childhood memories 

Of stories long lived

Time, the marker of the hours 

Of the moments recorded

Felt in memory 

Brings me sensations 

Of infinite joy 

Oh Earth!

Mother of animal and plant beings 

Oh wind!

Infinite sigh from the womb of the universe

Oh water!

That flows in the veins that run 

the paths in the immensity of space

Oh fire!

Sacred master who consumes all things, 

transforms and warms all things 

Hail to the directions that guide us 

To the eyes that orient us

And to the feet that hold us up

On this walk towards the infinite.

Photo: Cris Takuá

Every new day I'm more encouraged to invite humans to become wild, to feel the delicate beauty of being and staying in their territory in a good and beautiful way. To dawn listening to birdsong and to dusk by the fire, telling stories of the day that has passed. The simplicity that surrounds the lives of those who allow themselves to be part of nature is of a very enchanting magnitude.

The fast-paced world of capitalism, which turns everything into merchandise, has distanced most humans from their essence and their joy. While many numb themselves with medicines to be able to sleep, in the Tekoá, the Guarani, the Maxakali, the Ashaninka, the Huni Kuï and many other relatives sing to celebrate the night. 

Since I was a child, I've been enchanted by the humming of the rains that fall, cleansing the earth and calming my thoughts. In the rainy season, everything becomes joy: lemon balm tea, roasted corn cakes, endless games....

How great it is to be wild!

But capitalist society insists on labelling us and imposing rules on our minds so that we forget that no money can pay for simplicity. That's why I keep on with my rebellious attitude of believing that making food on a wood stove, using my pipe to pray and preparing herbal remedies for the children is to believe in a happier future! 

It's been a long time since I learnt how to untie the knots in the stomach of children, and it's so magical! Medical schools don't teach this to their students, who seek to practise healing as a profession. It's wildly beautiful to cure a fright, suspicious roundworms1 and so many other ailments that affect little children!

So I keep on dialoguing with the rain, learning to listen to the thunder and finding my way in this world of so many beauties.

Photo: Cris Takuá

WHERE'S THE RIVER THAT WAS HERE? – by Veronica Pinheiro

1st grade class, Circle of Reading: The nature that lives here
Photo: Teacher Wagner Clayton

Brazilian history textbooks have always presented the lives of indigenous and quilombola peoples in a prejudiced way. The gaps intentionally established in basic and higher education have formed and deformed generations, making them conform. The systematic erasure of knowledge produced by counter-hegemonic groups¹ is called EPISTEMICIDE. When scientific knowledge becomes the only way to read and understand life, a monocultural structure is established, and it attempts to disqualify other forms of knowledge. 

Last month, at an event at a federal university, I heard that "we are mongrels". The speech came from a well-intentioned PhD student who was trying to explain that mestizaje structures Brazilians' whole way of being and existing. Mongrels are dogs with no defined breed, with no delimited origin and mixed from two or more breeds. Despite all the love I have for mongrels, the thinking that compares the Brazilian people to dogs without a defined origin is perverse from start to finish.  

I start telling Indigenous and Afro-Pindoramic stories as follows: 

Five hundred years ago, there was no such people as Brazilians. The ones who lived here (in Rio de Janeiro) were from other peoples. They were nations that spoke different languages, they had their own way of being and their own name. And they always ask: Who used to live here? 

The colonial trap is so well set that we only give children the information contained in books. We do this even though we know that the colonisers, who tried to identify the name of each people, caused a lot of confusion because they didn't know the language spoken or simply preferred to refer to nations generically.

The school where we are weaving memories is located near the rivers Acari (fish), Irajá (gourd of honey) and Pavuna (swampy place). The rivers give their names to the neighbourhoods. And on their banks, as well as the riparian forest, we find threads of memory for our weavings. 

In the AYVU PARÁ in-person study cycle, which took place on 31 May 2023 at the Museum of Indigenous Cultures in São Paulo, Carlos Papá mediated classes with profound knowledge about the Nhe'ërÿ (the place where the spirits bathe, as the Guarani call the Atlantic Forest). During the days of the meeting, on the way to the restaurant where we had lunch, Papá asked me the following question: "What are you listening to?" 

It was lunchtime on a weekday in Barra Funda, São Paulo. I could hear children going to and from school, cars and buses on Matarazzo Avenue, people passing by. Papá, noticing that I didn't understand his question, stopped, looked at a manhole cover and said: "Can't you hear the river? There's a trapped river inside here."

After being gently guided to listen, I heard the river. Its voice was different from the rivers I had just heard when travelling through Recôncavo Baiano. A dense voice. It was so strong and alive that I stayed there for a few minutes. 

Rivers know many things. They certainly know the origin of many things. Nothing in this territory has an unknown origin. The question is: who are we listening to? Textbooks provide information about indigenous people and quilombolas, but indigenous and quilombolas are rarely involved in organising the contents. It's even rarer to find partnerships that don't treat indigenous and quilombola people as informant objects or informant interlocutors.

I dream of the day when, as a teacher, I'll be in a position to put the following in the references of my texts and lesson plans: "words from the Acari River" or "chanting of the hummingbird who landed on the window of the room".

Law 11.645 makes the study of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian history and culture compulsory in primary and secondary schools. In practice, books are the reference, and classes are meetings to go over numbers, data, dates and information about something unknown. Indigenous and Afro-diasporic history and culture are established in presence, not in reference. The myth or the itan are living memories of living peoples. Corporeality is the place of articulations and agencies of life. The territory vibrates the force of life; it is at once the body, the ground, the river, the air and all the beings that exist in that place. This is why we insist on talking about living schools. Schools of presence, with living memories.

To this end, we need to redraw the pathways. As a teacher, I must be open to processes of unlearning. De-education. I need to create another relationship with time/term/schedule/agenda. What the Acari River says matters more to me than what the books say. When children ask me: "Which people used to live here?"

I reply: "Where's the river that was here? Does any river pass through here? Because the rivers certainly know more about this place than the books I've read."

The question was fruitful: we now have a project together with the unit's pedagogical coordinator for the school and for the school community. Where is the river that was here? What do rivers say about us?

If you listen to rivers and know about liquid things, more or less torrential, we need you to build routes. We have a canoe called Enchanted to walk the waters. And there's always room for one more. Will you accept our invitation?

Reading room and 4th grade presentation to the school: It's not the rain's fault
Photos: Teacher Wagner Clayton 

¹ Counter-hegemonic movements are understood as practices of resistance to dominant management discourses which seek to contest and escape the discipline of the capitalist system's order. SULLIVAN, S; SPICER, A; BÖHM, S. Becoming global (un)civil society: Counter-Hegemonic Struggle and the Indymedia Network. Globalizations, 8(5), 703–717. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2011.617571

STORIES THE BOOKS DON'T TELL - by Cris Takuá

Photo: Roberto Romero

Sueli Maxakali is an artist, filmmaker, leader, grandmother and coordinator of the Maxakali Living School. She has spent years of her life dreaming of reuniting with her father Luis Angujá, as he is known, from the Kaiowá people of Mato Grosso do Sul state. They were separated more than 40 years ago during the military dictatorship. For this reencounter, Sueli and her sister Maiza conceived the film Yõg ãtak: My Father, Kaiowá. This feature-length documentary is in the process of being finalised and has had the support of the anthropologist and friend Roberto Romero and of Tatiane Klein, an anthropologist who has been studying alongside the Guarani and Kaiowá for years. She was the one who, while walking around the state in 2019, found Luis living in Tekoha Laranjeira Nhanderu and told Robertinho about it. Following this, they organised the first telephone call between them. At the time, I remember Tatiane Klein telling me about it and sending me a video of a very emotional Luis.

The Military Dictatorship in Brazil inflicted deep wounds on memories and violated bodies and territories, causing arrests, forced labour, torture, poisoning and disease. Among the indigenous peoples, there was also a ban on their mother tongue. The report of Comissão Nacional da Verdade [National Commission for Truth] states that more than 8,000 indigenous were killed during this period, victims of torture and attempts to erase their memories. The history and literature books studied in Brazilian schools tell a very superficial picture of what really happened during the years of dictatorship. Most of the books show the exiles of famous artists such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil with lots of photos, but they say absolutely nothing about the exile, genocide and ethnocide of indigenous peoples.

In the mid-1960s, at the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship, Luis Kaiowá and his cousin José Lino were taken to several different places by agents of the Brazilian state, finally arriving at the Mariano de Oliveira Indigenous Post, in the Água Boa Maxakali village in Minas Gerais. They lived there for over 15 years. Luís married Noêmia Maxakali and had two daughters, Maiza and Sueli, while José Lino married Maria Diva Maxakali and had four daughters. However, a little over two months after Sueli's birth, Luis and José Lino were taken back to Mato Grosso do Sul and never returned. Luis became a renowned prayer leader for the Kaiowá people, while José Lino died a few years after his return.

Photo: Tatiane Klein

Sueli and Maiza grew up without hearing from their father, but they always tried to ask about his whereabouts when they met Kaiowá relatives. With the arrival of Tatiane Klein's news about where Luis was living, Sueli, with the help of partners, organised the meeting trip and the recording of a documentary telling his story. This was planned for 2019, but with the arrival of Covid they had to cancel it and wait.

In the meantime, in September 2021, Sueli, Isael and several Maxakali families decided to take back an area, the Forest School Village, where they are today. There they cultivate the dream of healing the land and strengthening the lives of children and young people through educational practices. In 2022, with the decrease in Covid cases, Sueli and Maiza were able to restart the project and plan their long-awaited meeting. They prepared themselves spiritually for the departure from the Forest School Village with a great hawk-spirit ritual, Mõgmôka, and headed for Mato Grosso Sul. Between the two peoples, there was a lot of expectation, emotion, stories and memories in the midst of a centuries-old process of expropriation, murder and devastation of their ancestral territories. And even with so much violence and pain, the two peoples resist and display a vibrant and intense ritual of life, populated by songs, dreams and spirits. 

Photos: Roberto Romero

These profound stories of life and struggle don't appear in school history books, but they are present in many indigenous territories. To find out more about Sueli and Maiza's meeting with their father, the film will soon be in circulation and will contribute greatly to understanding what the Military Dictatorship meant for indigenous peoples.

I thank Roberto Romero and Tatiane Klein, who contributed with photos and narratives of this very important moment in the history of the Maxakali and Kaiowá peoples, but also in the history of Brazil.

I also share the link to another documentary made by Isael and Sueli that tells of the violence perpetrated against the Maxakali people during the Military Dictatorship: GRIN-Guarda Rural Indigena (Roney Freitas and Isael Maxakali 2016) - Documentary.

Photo: Alexandre Maxakali

SPEECH DRAWINGS - by Veronica Pinheiro

"Is anyone listening to me?
Who's listening to me clap once.
Who's listening to me clap twice.
Who's listening to me clap three times!"

Teachers all over Brazil use this quatrain to get children's attention for an activity. As a teacher, many times all I needed was students making their ears, eyes and hands available to me. There is a certain ruler that measures the efficiency of a teacher, and in schools we know it by the name of "class dominance or control". The quieter the class, the more efficient the conductor. A teacher at work is called a conductor. The behaviour of the class and their performance in examinations are the maximum criteria for evaluating a teacher. Why? Because these points are observed quantitatively; they are easily observable indices. I've never seen education departments or programmes measuring how happy a class or a teacher is during a two-month term.

Happiness and well-being are not the general or specific objectives of a school planning. How happy is the teacher of class A? Which class is the happiest in the school? Happiness is subversion in educational spaces. The school is a social structure that represents power schemes and, to this end, the people who occupy this space take on social roles. In order to ensure that they fit in and remain in the job, teachers adopt the social mask of the conductor, often presenting themselves publicly as a stern individual. It's hard work being kind at school, you know? Students don't recognise kindness as a conductor's characteristic. For them, adults are "saying no" machines; adults determine where, when and how. 

Basically, "a good class remains seated in silence, listening and writing". Delicate, right? Because a teacher with 40 students in a class can't work if the class isn't seated, right? Everything is done so that nobody questions the established model.

Faced with all the potency of the bodies – of teachers and students – the regular education system desires only voice and hands from teachers. From students, teachers want ears, eyes and hands. 

I attend 14 classes a week, spending 1 hour and 40 minutes with each of them. I have my social masks, I confess. When I feel that I have the attention of a class, I take off the conductor's mask. Some classes understand the code and we carry on happily to the sound of music, reading, writing and observing how nature is present in the school. However, one class has already realised that I make up a character to teach. These kids, smarter than me, don't let me talk, they don't lend me their ears. Faced with this challenge, I've sought out the resources I have to ensure the quality of our meetings. 

I took clay to class and thought: "Maybe contact with the earth will create quality listening time?" The process of creating with clay is also associated with meditative practices of full concentration. Touch, contact and interaction with the earth can promote a sense of community and connection between the people in the group. But it didn't work with them.

I tried several things. Some worked partially. 

I remembered the experience I had with young Guarani artists in preparation for the Nhe'ërÿ Cycle in May 2023. I watched while they sang and danced in front of a blank canvas. Before painting, they sang the memories of Nhe'ërÿ and honoured Nhanderu with dances and sacred words. When they felt in their spirits that they were authorised to represent Nhe'ërÿ with drawings, they drew the sung and spoken words. 

That's when I decided to stop reading stories to the Third Year and started drawing the stories from the book on the whiteboard. The Adventures of the Kawã Boy, by Elias Yaguakãg, was drawn on the whiteboard and, while the class was busy reproducing the images in the half-blank half-lined notebook, I took the opportunity to tell (sometimes read) the stories. Chapter by chapter, the words took on images that were erased from the board at the end of the class. I realised that the same images found a place in the eyes, notebooks and memories created during class. One day I forgot the drawing on the whiteboard and their English teacher didn't understand the drawings. So they told her about Kawã, the indigenous boy who was protected by Ka'apora'ãga. The teacher came to me at lunchtime and said with a smile in her eyes: "They've heard and know every detail of the story. They're not just hearing you, they're listening to you".

Since we call our sharings "sowings", we need to know what the soil can give us before we throw the seed. I wanted ears, but they're visual. It wouldn't work, would it?

They listen with their eyes!

Drawings: collective construction by Class 1401 with teacher Veronica

CHILDREN’S THOUGHTS – by Cris Takuá

Photos: Alba Rodríguez Núñez

On a morning of blue skies and an illuminated mountain, I was reflecting on the profundity of the thoughts that blossom from little children. In this world of enchantment and beauty, everything thinks, observes and imagines.

Kauê Karai Tataendy Mindua, my 10-year-old son, has been a thinker since the first steps of his life, a great teacher of the subtleties of the things that surround us. He looks after chickens and dogs and has a rooster called Pirata, who he has been taking care of since he was born and who is blind in one eye. With great affection, Kauê cured him and today the rooster Pirata commands the yard with his loud crowings as soon as dawn breaks.

On this journey together with my little teacher, I learn a lot of knowledge from him. One thought he brought up to me a few days ago was about the relationship between large humans and forest beings. He asked me why people grow up and stop being "delicating" with other animals and plants. He thinks that many large humans have lost the sensitivity to listen and talk to other beings and even to spirits.

Photo: Alba Rodríguez Núñez

Immersed in his deep concerns since he was a child, while walking in the woods he tells us about other times and remembers the situations and moments of his life that his memory can still reach. 

It's interesting to realise the lucid transparency of the dimension of children's thoughts, which weave imaginary narratives and are enchanted by the smallest things.

My two sons have always accompanied me on life's journeys, in my struggles, work and articulations. One day I was invited to comment on a film about prayers, shamans from various parts of the world, who keep on with their chants and prayers, holding up the heavens and balancing life on the planet. When Kauê got home, thoughtful as he always is, he commented on what he had seen and heard that night, and the next day he asked me to watch the film again. It was a powerful moment for both of us, as we were enchanted and at the same time deeply touched by those realities that were so distant, yet so similar to our own.

After some time, I saw him with his coloured pens, very focused, drawing everything he was thinking about our conversations and that very profound reality.

Drawings: Kauê

Pray so it rains, pray so it continues to snow, pray so the rivers and seas continue to have clean water and fish to eat, pray to keep the forest alive in the face of so much violence, such as mining companies, oil companies and overwhelming agribusiness.

This is how we continue to dialogue and feel the strength that emanates, in the four corners of the world, from these praying men and women who continue, in their own unique way, to resist in order to take care of our wounded Earth.

May we continue to pray and learn from the delicacy of children.

🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🌱🌿💚

Photo: Alba Rodríguez Núñez

TREADING SOFTLY ON THE EARTH OR THE FIRST SCHOOL HALF TERM – by Veronica Pinheiro

Collage: Lívia, 7 years old | Class: I am nature
Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

We reached Complexo da Pedreira through a school. We have many criticisms of the education system that homogenises thoughts and practices. The criticism is wide-ranging, not directed at teachers or a specific education department. The regular school plays its part in the project of imposing European civilisation. This imposition results in a distortion of identity for Afro-Pindoramic peoples, since the school teaches us to see through the eyes of the coloniser. Leonardo Boff once said:

"Each one reads with the eyes they have, and interprets from where their feet tread." 

By ignoring knowledge and sciences that are not intentionally contained in its manuals, the school provokes a process of deterritorialisation of children within favelas, quilombos and villages; it thus delegitimises the knowledge brought by children and families, forcing students to adopt the idiom and language of the dominator. 

I have witnessed (as a student, teacher, pedagogical coordinator and school principal) a lot of physical and symbolic violence committed within the school.Symbolic violence is the "invisible" violence that subjugates and imprisons subjects. We have a lot of critics, but we can't ignore the fact that in Brazil urbanised children and adolescents, especially in the peripheries, are so vulnerable that school can become a space for interesting constructions. So... if school is a place of homogenisation and docilisation of populations, it can also become a place of rupture. 

So what would be the disruptive element?

Cris Takuá, my teacher, teaches me not to rely on ready-made answers, but on sowing possibilities for transformation that sustain worlds. We believe in strengthening territories by awakening recent and very old memories. Since time is circular, what will be and what has already been are sensitively connected. Telling stories to wake up is not just about awakening a socio-historical consciousness, but about establishing pillars that make it possible for people to read themselves through their own eyes. 

For these and for other reasons, however, we couldn't just go to school and tell teachers and students that they need to think in a different way. We are building dialogue and bonds, not applying a proposal devoid of context. We arrived treading softly on the earth. Many of the students' parents studied at E.M.P. Escragnolle Dória as kids and were pupils of the teachers who teach their children. Some teachers have worked here for over 15 years. It's essential to hear these stories. 

We ended the first half term in great mood. The first grade teacher invited us to plan the activities for the next terms together, including the idea of a living school in her planning. Some teachers are voluntarily accompanying the children's workshops at school and the reading circles. Others found me on Instagram and made their way to Selvagem.

The principals and the pedagogical coordinator have also started to dream along with us. Even the Sun, the theme of Selvagem's 2024 study cycle, will officially become part of the school's Annual Pedagogical Project – PPA. We didn't give lectures or hold meetings to talk about the cycles to the teaching team, proselytising is not part of the Selvagem way of thinking. So how did the partnerships came about? Through the magic of the encounter. The encounter is capable of creating bonds of life in an organic, natural and confluent way.

“May we then cheer up
and cheer up once more,
Nhamandu first true father!"¹

Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

¹ Translation of excerpt from Pierre CLASTRES, 1990. A fala sagrada: mitos e cantos sagrados dos índios Guarani [1974], translated by Níeia Adan Bonatti. Campinas-SP: Papirus.

KA’A, MATE HERB – by Cris Takuá

Drawing: Cris Takuá

Kunhã Tatá, Doralice, was like a grandma to me, a teacher. She introduced me to and taught me about the sacred master of Nhe’ërÿ: Ka’a.

She used to say that Ka’a and Takuá were daughters of Nhanderu. One day, while walking around the Earth, he took a cedarwood branch and blew on it, thus creating a child, who played and urinated everywhere. Then a little sprout of mate herb was born: Ka’á. It was a girl and she could already sing with the takuapu. That's why, to this day, women sing hitting the taquara staff, a sort of bamboo staff, against the ground.

Takuá and Ka’a left with Nhanderu when the world caught fire, the big water came and everything ended. But, to this day, the Guarani have mate herb to do their chimarrão – a bitter infusion served in a gourd – and taquara for the takaupu – and also to weave straw for sieves and baskets.

Nhe’e kuery, the spirits who live with Nhanderu, are telling the prayers that the earth is going to end again. There has already been a period of darkness in the old days. There was no more sunrise, and yet the water came. 

In this earth we are now, sooner or later this will happen too. If it doesn't happen, we won't be able to stand the increasingly hot weather, and rain will come, yapó há’puá tatareve’gua, clay with fire from the sky, will come.

Nhanderu thinks the world is too old and wants to clean the earth. 

This is how Kunhã Tatá used to tell us, giving us guidance on how to walk around the Earth, how to respect time, understanding the direction of the winds, clouds and thunder.

For the Guarani people, time splits in two: Ara Ymã, the old time, and Ara Pyau, the new time. Whenever times change, it is customary to perform the Ka’a ceremony for protection and strengthening.

Now we are beginning another Ara Ymã, time of concentration and seclusion. There is no precise date on which times change. But the Tupã kuery, the thunders, pass sending warnings. The prayers understand the signal, and quickly instruct the tembiguai, guardians of the houses, to go harvest the Ka’a.

During the Ka'a consecration ceremony we learnt a lot, we see many things that she shows us and she puts us in our places, guiding us to follow the time that begins with wisdom and tranquility.

Photo: Carlos Papá

**********************************

In the middle of the dawn

Amidst the chants of the tarova

Concentrated in the pestle 

I felt myself greening

It was the healing master’s force

Ka’a, the teacher of times

Daughter of Nhanderu 

And I saw her, beautifully, greeting

Sacred Nhamandu Mirim, the Sun,

 Who was slowly rising 

And with his radiant tail 

our entire home he was yellowing 

opy’i, our house of prayers 

Our living school in dancing

Teaching and learning 

This is how we keep on walking.

🌿🌿🌿🌱

Photo: Cris Takuá

TIME AND LOVE – by Veronica Pinheiro

Let us imagine particles in space.
Each particle is an energy point. 

However, nothing exists on its own,
everything exists because there is a dance. 

In this flexible cosmos,
each body that irrupts
is a new design and
transforms everything around.1¹

Anna Dantes

In my home I have learned that it takes a community to educate a child.

"nothing exists on its own"

Having the opportunity to get back to school as a community – belonging to and bringing the Selvagem Community with me – puts me in another place, an expanded one. I have worked as a teacher in schools; for many years I was reprimanded for carrying affection and smiles in the same backpack I used to carry books. I was born and raised in a community. At home, I learned how to love with my hands. We used to work while singing and taking care of eachother. My grandpa Antônio taught my dad that singing scares off fears and protects the house. We shared the work of looking after the kids. We also shared water, food, pain and joy.

Once I heard I was too happy for someone who worked as a teacher in a public school. The observation came from another teacher. On that occasion she was responsible for organising the timetable and the workload of all the teachers. In that year I was able to fulfil my workload by attending three days a week. However, after the observation, I was assigned to work five days a week from 7am to 5pm. My punishment was to spend more time at school. Full of vacant time, I took the opportunity to get to know my workplace better. That's how I learned to observe the students, employees and all the lives that made up a scholar unit. A theatre company with 6th grade students was born from that experience, the fruit of vacant time filled with poems and songs.

In an attempt to punish affections, they resorted to time. But in Iroko's domains, time is not a punishment. Time is strength. Iroko is the very representation of the dimension of time, little known to living and dead beings, to those who were born or are about to be. Guardian of ancestrality, Iroko rules the times and strengthens the links between the past and the present. Iroko is the first tree that happened to be planted on earth. For those who descend from bantus, Iroko equals the Inquice Kitembu: the transforming wind and time's tree, time's body.

I get back to the classroom in other times, I get back as a quilombed community, pregnant of beings and dreams. It's time for dancing. It's time for wide affection. Embraced affection. I see that, little by little, children, employees, teachers and staff from Professor Escragnólle Dória Municipal School allow themselves to enter our Selvagem, our Wild dance. We dare to awaken memories that were stored by the time. We are writing notes to the transforming wind; the stone quarry where the school is located was once known as Morro da Ventania, Windstorm Hill. Through art we create sensible dialogues, in an attempt to wake up, in the urbanised beings we are, the nature we also are.

In this universe called school, my Selvagem community dances expanding life. Affecting and being affected. My community backs me up.

"While the universe expands, love coalesces."²

Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

NOTAS:
1 and 2 Notebooks Selvagem – Wild Arrow 6, Time and Love
https://selvagemciclo.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CADERNO49_FLECHA_6.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMBCABxXCQ&t=620s&ab_channel=SELVAGEMciclodeestudossobreavida

CONSTELLATION OF KNOWLEDGE – by Cris Takuá

Photo: Vhera Poty

In educational processes, and not only in them, but also in human relationships, I miss affection and concentration, care and attention!

This makes me realise that the school institution is not making sense! This school model prioritises writing, reading, numbers, a flood of ephemeral information, empty of poetic and practical meaning for the lives of children and young people.

I've been thinking and dreaming about Living Schools, which value everyone's potential in their own delicate essence. Which dialogue about the values of being in the territories in a beautiful and balanced way. Which talk about the arts, healing, chanting and the enchantment of this life that pulses with every new dawn.

For twelve years, I was a teacher at the indigenous state school in my community. Those were years of struggles and challenges, a constant attempt to balance the toughness and the beauty of this long journey. As a philosophy teacher, but also a history, sociology and geography teacher, I always enjoyed drawing, going out and walking with the students, seeing the forest, listening and learning from beyond the books.

And along the way I was part of a very strong process of demanding rights to guarantee the qualification of indigenous teachers in an indigenous intercultural degree programme.

To do this, we formed a working group and, for two years, we were in dialogue, debating and building the PPP, the Political Pedagogical Project, for the course. In this WG process that resulted in the PPP for the degree programme we dreamed of, we developed the concept of ‘curricular constellation’, to get away from the idea of a grid, where all knowledge is divided, fragmented and trapped.

Thinking of a sky that produces knowledge and, from that point on, articulating knowledge and practices will be the great differential of this qualification, which will bring a lot of strength to the indigenous territories of São Paulo. The course will be organised through alternating between university time and community time.

After much struggle, in March this year the qualification course began at Unifesp in Santos, a historic moment for indigenous peoples living in São Paulo.

I was invited to offer the inaugural lecture together with Carlos Papá on the first day of the degree programme. It was a very special moment because, having been out of the classroom for two years, I was able to reflect on my concerns about the school, the mental monoculture and the challenges I had experienced during the time I was teaching and, at the same time, I fought intensely to guarantee an educational process that respected the time of each culture. 

During community time, each undergraduate student has to do an internship under the guidance of a teacher, who can also be a spiritual leader, a connoisseur of the culture or a member of the local school. I was surprised when a young student asked me to be his supervisor at the Guarani Living School with the coordinator Carlos Papá. This is a transformative moment for education and the strengthening of ancestral memories.

The Living Schools have blossomed like a breath of inspiration, a multicoloured sowing that activates the energies of teachers who are often tired of the constant challenges. We hope that, as a result of this collective walk, they will be encouraged to weave together plots of narratives, knowledge and possibilities for dreaming further.

Drawing: Fabiano Kuaray

“NA FLORESTA, EU CONSIGO FECHAR OS OLHOS” – por Veronica Pinheiro

Desenho colorido por Manuella 10 anos

Oficina 1 – O sol e floresta

Quando conectamos os seres urbanos que somos com a natureza que também somos, pegamos o caminho de volta pra casa. Voltar é um movimento tão importante quanto ir. É comum na educação falarmos de “progresso”, “avanço” e “desenvolvimento”. Parece que a vida é um movimento só de ida.

“Investir no seu desenvolvimento, com um olhar atento para o processo de aprendizagem de todo e de cada aluno é fundamental para construir trajetórias de avanço”¹. Desenvolver para avançar, Secretaria de Educação Carioca.

Numa proposta contracolonial de ensino, dizemos que desenvolvimento desconecta, que o desenvolvimento é uma variante da cosmofobia. Afirmamos que nosso caminho é de envolvimentos. 

Na busca de práticas de envolvimento, nossas oficinas de Aprendizagens Vivas evocam saberes e fazeres presentes no cotidiano e na memória. Entendemos que a corporeidade é o lugar de registros e agência, onde se articulam e se transmitem mundos. Pensamos em oficinas sinestésicas (sons, aromas, texturas, sabores e saberes), que, a partir da expressão artística, buscam possibilitar um espaço de envolvimento, criatividade e despertamento de memórias. 

De onde venho, dizem que arte é a conversa das almas; por isso, cantamos enquanto trabalhamos e dançamos enquanto lutamos. A arte e sua potência de convocação de um corpo coletivo pode, pela liberação dos sentidos, romper espaço e tempo. Romper espaço e tempo na tentativa de conectar seres urbanizados que somos com a natureza que também somos. 

Nossa primeira oficina na escola aconteceu em dia de operação policial na comunidade. Fazenda Botafogo é uma região conhecida pelos altos índices de roubos de cargas e tráfico  de drogas e animais silvestres. Romper com tempo e espaço era tudo o que eu queria naquele dia 14 de março. Começamos falando do sol e da selva. No dia anterior, nós tínhamos andado pela parte de trás do quintal da escola para ficar embaixo das árvores e ver de onde vinha a argila. Muitos não sabiam o que era argila, vários não sabiam do que era feita a argila. Ryan explica pra turma: 

– Argila é a massinha de terra.

Distribuídas argilas de muitas cores aos alunos, pedi que eles ouvissem a história com a argila nas mãos e que tentassem modelar com os olhos fechados. As mãos precisariam seguir o que a música falava. A oficina foi realizada com turmas do 2° ano do ensino fundamental (crianças com 7 anos de idade), as mesmas turmas que apresentam dificuldades em sentar para ouvir minhas aulas. 

Duas semanas antes, eu havia tentado uma atividade que pedia para que fechassem os olhos e quase nenhuma criança da turma conseguira; o incômodo entre elas foi tamanho que pesquisei sobre o tal medo do olho fechado. “Nictofobia, medo irracional do escuro”. No caso das crianças da escola, o medo do escuro não é irracional; desde pequenos são ensinados a estar atentos e vigilantes. Os perigos são reais.

No dia da oficina, no entanto, sentados e com a argila nas mãos, caminhávamos em pensamento pela floresta. Enquanto as almas conversavam, ouvi a seguinte frase: 

– Na floresta, eu consigo fechar os olhos. 

Depois disso, não lembro de muita coisa.

Photo: Professor Wagner Clayton

¹Coordenadoria de Ensino Fundamental Habilidades Curriculares 1º Bimestre 2024 Secretaria Municipal de Educação – Prefeitura do Rio de Janeiro

NHE’ËRŸ LIVING FOREST – by Cris Takuá

Photo: Edu Simões

Nhe'ërÿ living forest 

Therein dwells a portal of knowledge 

Therein dwells a portal of knowledge 

Of capitalist colonisation 

That tries to turn everything into merchandise 

Nhe'ërÿ, abode of knowledge and enchantment 

Where spirits bathe 

Where the lives of many peoples have woven forms of resistance

With sacred songs and prayers 

All the beings that inhabit Nhe'ërÿ 

The tree, the water, the heart in our body, 

everything pulses. 

Through the pulsing we feel emotional, we feel we are alive. 

The pulse of each artist of the forest generates a being, generates a thought. 

The Nhe'ërÿ forest invites us to awaken the pulsing. 

We are always learning, 

every day we are learning from each other.

Together, even at a distance, we are pulsating in the same energy 

Spreading seeds in the face of this imbalance, the suffering of the earth. 

This cosmovision and poetics of life is what guides us

And strengthens us every new day.

Praying people continue to chant good and beautiful words to wake up 

Awaken 

Cheer up 

And calm the spirits that surround us.

With every new dawn, Nhamandu Tenonde, the Sun

Continues to illuminate and warm us 

Honouring the little children

Who, with their purity and delicacy, insist on re-teaching us the practice of Good Living.

Photos: Carlos Papá

DELETE THAT, IT'S SHAMEFUL! – by Veronica Pinheiro

Reading room, book 3

Read the following extracts aloud:

‘And he wasn't too bright, either. He had built his whole house out of straw. Can you believe it? Who in his right mind would build a house of straw?’

‘That whole darn straw house fell down.’

‘He was a little smarter, but not much. He had built his house of sticks.’

‘So the wolf went to the next house. This guy was the First and Second Little Pigs' brother. He must have been the brains of the family. He had built his house of bricks.’

Did the story of the three little pigs really happen that way? What if the wolf decided to tell the whole thing from his point of view? 

The wolf told it and it got worse. Published by Companhia das Letrinhas, A verdadeira história dos três porquinhos[The true story of the 3 little pigs], by Jon Scieszka, is a children's book that is part of the reading room collection of Rio de Janeiro's municipal public schools. In the school where I work there are 32 copies. A primary school class has an average of 32 children, so it's a book recommended for class reading. In addition, in 2013 and 2014, the text was included in the pedagogical notebooks of the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Department of Education, with some sections – the ones that classify people who build houses out of straw or wood as ignorant – being removed. However, in the two editions of the teaching material for children in the 4th year of primary school, the passage ‘That whole darn straw house fell down’ appears.

The book A verdadeira história dos três porquinhos is supposed to be a text to prove that the Big Bad Wolf is innocent. The book's intention is to make the reader aware that the wolf was the victim of a frame-up. In the format of a diary, the wolf tells his version of the story; and I'm sad that no one has flagged it up: delete that passage, it's shameful. On the contrary, the wolf's outburst was written, revised, published and distributed to primary school children.

I would like to bring up again a piece of information that appeared in the diary of the first week: Pedreira, the favela where the school I teach at is located, has the lowest Human Development Index in the city and the state of Rio de Janeiro. As we walk along the neighbourhood's main road, we see many houses made of sticks. 

Photo of Botafogo Road. Personal Collection Lenon Suhett, who researches Geography and the School Community
(Lenon and Veronica were school headmasters together from 2019 to 2021)

A verdadeira história dos três porquinhos hurts the children directly, as well as the community and traditional populations who, demonstrating abundance, ancestral knowledge and a relationship with the land, build their houses out of straw, wood and earth. 

Carter G. Woodson says that the Eurocentric educational system is at the service of the diseducation of black Americans and calls on the black population to develop and implement a programme of their own. Reading the diary of a wolf made me remember Professor Woodson and think that we need effective decolonial educational practices and not instagrammable ones. 

Photo of a house in the Rio Silveira Guarani Village. Personal collection of Veronica Pinheiro

Over the course of the trimester, we will build our little house out of bamboo, straw and clay. The children need to know that what the wolf calls ‘unintelligent’ we call traditional knowledge, bioconstruction, and that it takes a lot of knowledge to build a house without buying anything. Indigenous peoples and quilombolas know a lot about soil, plants, where the sun rises and where the moon is in relation to the house they build; and this is all about relationships. We will retell stories, activate practices, knowledge and memories.

May the Sun help us through this journey. 

The wolf has already written what he thinks. Let's not expect anything from him.

House in the São José quilombo. The São José quilombo has existed for around 150 years and is located in the city of Valença (RJ).
It is a community of descendants of enslaved people who came from Angola and the Congo. Currently, around 200 quilombolas
live there and their houses are made of adobe, wattle and daub and have straw roofs.
Photo: Personal collection of Veronica Pinheiro

¹SCIESZKA, Jon. A verdadeira história dos três porquinhos(New York: Penguin Books, 1996)

WHAT HOLDS UP THE SKIES? – by Cris Takuá

The native palm trees of Nhe'ërÿ have held up the skies since the beginning of the creation of the world and the beings that inhabit it. The blue sky that exists today reflects the foliage of the blue palm trees that, at the beginning of the world, made this transition between the worlds we inhabit.

There are many palm trees that, with their beauty, straw, fruit and shade, have been enchanting and sustaining life here in the middle of the forest. 

In February, we organised a workshop at the Guarani Living School for young people to produce drawings of some palm species for the exhibition Mba'é Ka'á, o que tem na mata: Barbosa Rodrigues entre plantas e pajés [Mba'é Ka'á, what's in the woods: Barbosa Rodrigues among plants and shamans], which takes place between 8 March and 8 September at the Botanical Garden museum in Rio de Janeiro.

Coordinated by Carlos Papá, the workshop provided an opportunity to read and carefully observe the book Sertum Palmarum Brasiliensis, by J. Barbosa Rodrigues, and also to walk in the forest of the Rio Silveira Village, to see and recognise the palm trees that are all around us.

Those were days of great excitement and listening to the stories told by Papa about the importance of palm trees for the balance of the forest and for sustaining the skies that we have inhabited since the beginning of the original darkness.

Some children, along with their parents, also created drawings that reflected their perceptions of the palm trees they had seen and together we created a beautiful presentation of 10 species.

The blue palm trees 

Are spiritual beings 

From a cosmological world 

They show us the portals

Between worlds.

In the forest there are native beings 

Jataí, Jussara, Jerivá 

Guaricanga, Brejaúba, Butiá 

Bitter Jejy ró, Tuku, Indaiá

Palm heart species 

Palm trees

That feed and enchant 

Shade our walk 

They cover houses 

And cover the forest

With a deep green colour.

Nhe'ërÿ, land of palm trees 

That keep sustaining our walk 

In this land

……..Cristine Takuá……..

Drawings produced at the Guarani workshop, 2024

THAT MISS OVER THERE WILL TALK TO YOU – by Veronica Pinheiro

Playdough: Pérola, 6 years old

In the first week of class, my job was to shelter those who cried. I thought that was funny. Then I realised the size of the responsibility. My little mates would talk about this pain in their tummies and, as well as tears, they would carry helplessness in their eyes. 

When welcoming them, I would say that I would stay there for as long as it took. I'd ask where the fear was. And their little hands would go straight to their bellies. Is it hunger? To my heart's relief, the answers were all negative. Then came the last question: I think I saw fear in your eyes; what are you afraid of?

In general, the process of schooling deterritorialises within the territory. It leaves the child's identity in the background, determines what is important or not to know, determines what to eat, how to dress, it sets the sacred apart and imposes new ways of life. The so-called universal knowledge, basic knowledge and basic education guide the curricula. Little by little, an individual becomes a class; little by little, bodies are docilised. And when we least expect it... all the drawings are painted inside the lines.

There are so many social complications that the school has become the main agency for human (de-/con-)formation, invading villages, quilombos and outskirts as an arm of the State. The school introduces children to the world. And for many, in many places, it is the only institution qualified to transmit knowledge. However, if there is a compass guiding thoughts northwards, and if it is at the service of colonialism in order to subjugate subjects and make memories numb... there must be a compass guiding thoughts southwards.

I suggest we seek to turn southwards concerning the way we are at school. Let's create safe environments for teachers and children to paint outside the lines that outline the drawings. Let's accept the troublemaker and his insubmissive body. I think that, during the process of turning southwards, life memories and the sustaining principles of the territories will be awakened. Turning southwards means pluriversalising ways of existing and relating to life. 

In a certain way, those children, who cried during the first week of school, knew that they would have to leave behind, in addition to their homes, a bit of themselves outside the school walls. I know someone is going to say: 'But some children go smiling!' Yes, I know, and those worry me the most.

RESIST IN ORDER TO SURVIVE – by Cristine Takuá

Young people are striving to discover the essence of their mission, designed by Nhanderu upon their birth into this world of imperfection. Over the years, many are forgetting this calling that was destined for each one, and as they mature and develop, they tread a sad way of living, the path of Teko vai (the bad and unsightly way of being and existing in the territory), unlike Teko Porã, which is Bem Viver, or living well - a harmonious and beautiful way of navigating life with balance and grace.

As a result, among indigenous youth there has been a great increase in depression, apathy, suicide, and unbalanced ways of being in the world. A reflection of a historic pattern of unconstitutional violence and wounds in human relationships. Resolving these entanglements of imbalance depends very much on nurturing affection and care.

Photo: Vherá Poty

Our prayer houses are collective spaces for both healing and harmonious coexistence. They are ancestral schools in which, guided by practices and presence of male and female prayers, we learn how to navigate the world again, how to deal with its pains and challenges. Plants, masters of the profound wayfindings, teach us to find balance between the beauty and harshness of life, and thus rethink the hard and heavy footprints that many have been leaving on Earth.

Each morning, Nhamandu Mirim, the sacred Sun, rises to bathe us in sunlight and give us strength and courage.

And so we continue….

After the storm everything calms 

After the tempest, the rainbow sprouts 

In the evening

Signs of changes and transformations

Reveal the rebirth of matter

Singing spirits fly in the full moon

Spreading messages of love

To small intelligent beings

Life is made of choices 

Each pathway shaped 

By our desires 

Each destiny directed 

By sacred beings

Moments of storm show us

That there is a need to metamorphose

Our relationships, our steps 

In this journey of Life

It is not enough to amplify matter 

We must reshape the soul

With care and affection 

Overcome the barriers 

Of the unknown 

And dive into the multicoloured universe

Of wise teaching 

That dwells beyond appearances

In the child's smile.

I strive for the silence 

Of deep songs 

A sigh for the soul

A rest for the mind 

To follow the paths of my dreams…

……..Cristine Takuá……..

Photo: Alexandre Maxakali

ON THE WAY TO THE PEDREIRA FAVELA – by Veronica Pinheiro

We arrived at the Pedreira Favela. A complex with the lowest Human Development Index in the city and the state of Rio de Janeiro. We reached the old Ventania Hill, where the wind blew freely and howled loudly. They say that when the wind whistled in the Pedreira, you would hear nothing else. The Pedreira Hill is located in the neighbourhood of Fazenda Botafogo, between Pavuna, Costa Barros, and Acari, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Strangely, the wind has fallen silent in this place. The ruins of an old slave quarters, a cemetery of slaves, some torture instruments, and a disused quarry are the most recent layers beneath the ground of this pathway we begin to tread. 

An old train line crossed the dense forest of the Fazenda Botafogo neighbourhood. In the 1970s, the express train carried people in search of work and a new home. These stories are still heard in the territory: "I arrived at Pedreira on September 4, 1970. Until then, I lived in other places. I arrived from the state of Espírito Santo, but I am from Minas Gerais. I was accompanied by my husband and six children," says Dona Geralda, one of the first residents of the Pedreira favela complex.

Map of the Pedreira Favela - João, 6 years old

The train transformed the place where the wind sang into an intersection of body-territories. Bodies in transit came together in confluence, were strengthened, and built a community. "When we come together in confluence, we don't stop being ourselves, we become ourselves and someone else - we thrive," says Nego Bispo in his book A terra dá, a terra quer [The earth gives, the earth wants] (Ubu Editora, 2023). Confluence is a force that amplifies. This force brought Selvagem here. A solar confluence: Sun, wind, quarry, memories preserved in the earth and carried within our bodies. Corporeality is a realm of inscriptions and agency, where worlds are articulated and transmitted.

Our pathway in the Pedreira is alongside the Municipal School Professor Escragnolle Dória, for us, Casa das Crianças or the house of children. We believe in the confluence of bodies - students, teachers, plants, colours, wind, Sun. In 2024, we begin a journey of living ways of knowing within a school. The school's reading room will be our Selvagem centre of irradiation. There, we will receive 439 children per week and 19 teachers per month. There will be 200 school days; 8 art workshops (for children and teachers) and a festive gathering at the end of the year. I will serve as a teacher of reading circles and coordinator of art activities in this role. In the first 10 days of class, we have already experienced so much: from the fear of the bate-bolas, the masked clowns that dance during carnival, to fear of stray bullets during the school day. We've already read 2 books, shed tears, smiled, and played too.

In this Selvagem journey, we will engage in dialogue with children and teachers to cultivate a living school. We advocate for another way of being and existing in the world, emphasizing that life and bem viver, or living well, must be part of everyday school life. Our purpose extends beyond mere education. Aside from complying with national guidelines, we climb the Pedreira activating memories, knowledge, and practices. A solar wayfinding, encouraging us to feel, listen, create, and play. We will continue to sow seedlings, words, and worlds. Guided by the winds and bathed by the Sun, we dedicate ourselves to serving life.

¹ Brazilian Law No. 11,645, of March 10, 2008, makes it mandatory to study the history and culture of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian peoples in elementary and secondary education establishments, but does not provide for its mandatory inclusion in higher education establishments for teacher training courses, the licentiate degrees.

THE DAY I HELD THE SUN BOY IN MY ARMS – by Veronica Pinheiro

"With thin and strong threads
The spiders weave
Their webs.
Sometimes,
a drop of water
hangs,
or a ray of Sun."¹

There are many ways to tell the story of a place. This diary presents the records of a teacher who, from the school library, weaves threads of memories. Sometimes awakened, sometimes constructed, these memories are composing a web with thin and strong threads. A web with invisible threads that connect dreams, forests, villages, quilombos, cities, rivers, large and small beings. With the spider, the Huni Kuï women learned the art of weaving, the enchanted spider Basne Puru Yuxibu is the guardian of the cotton threads and the knowledge of weaving. With the shaman Dua Busë, I learned to weave paths for a living school. Dua Busë lives in the Heart of the Forest Village, in Acre state, he is the guardian of deep lore of Huni Kuin cosmology.

Weaving is a delicate work, it requires constancy and spirit, a silent spirit that needs to be renewed with some frequency. When weaving with threads of memory, a multitude supports the hands that weave. And it´s this multitude of visible and invisible beings that make it possible to dream of life and practice good living. The weaving is movement, a permanent dynamic that occurs in many directions, opening paths and generating possibilities.

In 2025, the Ways of Knowing Group will continue weaving meetings, workshops, and outings with the children of Municipal School Professor Escragnolle Dória; simultaneously, it will be generating movements to expand and deepen dialogues with Management Departments and Education Secretariats, Social Projects, and other schools. These dialogues are not always sweet and deepening them sometimes means knowing pains that we wouldn't see if memories were not awakened.

Returning to the Pedreira Favela Complex is part of this movement to expand and deepen dialogues, while renewing our commitment and courage. 'We agreed not to die.' This agreement was signed in the Ancestral Memories Cycle, during the Vigil of Orality, and is renewed with each new cycle that Selvagem allows me to share. The first month of school is the time to understand the state of the territory, and also to listen to the desires of the children and adults.

With the meeting prepared, the books separated, and the reading room organized, it was time to resume activities interrupted by the school holidays. On the first day of meeting with the children, with the box of books in my hands, I repeatedly heard the sounds of gunfire very close to the school. Immediately, I went to the classroom to meet the students. When I opened the door, I found all the children crouched on the floor to protect themselves from the shots. In the corner of the room, under the table, trembling with fear, the Sun boy covered his ears with his hands; with his mouth closed, he prayed that no one would get hurt.

The Sun boy, as the student became known, played the role of the Sun in the film produced by the children at the end of the 2024 school year. Resulting from the workshops 'Playing Lights Up the Sun' (workshops facilitated by Paula Novaes, Carol Delgado, and Clarissa Viegas), the film made by the children is a beautiful experience of listening and creation. For a few weeks, the shyest boy in the fourth grade was the 'Sun of the School.' Playing the Sun, he shone in such a sensitive way that he managed to move teachers, staff, and the children of the school during the film screenings in the reading room.

We ended the activities in 2024 with the Sun boy calling for the summer holidays. Returning to Pedreira and finding him frozen with fear was too hard. Without knowing exactly what was happening outside the school, to the terrifying sound of gunfire from the war, I also got down on the floor with the children. Under the tables, I distributed poetry books. 'The web of waters, who would like to read?' Curiously, everyone wanted to read, because as they read, they could occupy other places and leave where we were, even if only in their imagination. I held the Sun boy in my arms, seeing that he couldn't read alone.

When I read: 'A giant forest / breathes. 

'The boy took a timid breath. 

I continued reading: 'Amazon is its name.' 

The boy in my arms looked at me while I read, as he had realised that 'breathes' was not an imperative spoken by me to him, but a vital process performed by the 'giant forest.' His gaze seemed to be the gaze of someone who remembered something. I believe the boy remembered the forest and continued to breathe. In my arms, he dared to continue reading and, like the flying rivers that cry when embracing the mountains, he also cried. These witnessed tears called me to stay. To stay weaving affections. To stay by the children's side. 'Weaving is a delicate work, it requires constancy and spirit; a silent spirit that needs to be renewed with some frequency,' I kept repeating this out loud. I’m still repeating this now

¹ The web of waters, by Roseana Murray and Bia Hetzel.

AT THE MARGINS OF RIO – by Veronica Pinheiro

Every weekday, since February, I've been diving onto the asphalt that leads to Favela da Pedreira. Sometimes body and thought move across the thick bitumen surface, sometimes thought moves alone along suspended paths. For many days, words appeared before the Sun. Moonlight was celebrated with gratitude – returning was always a doubt. The Sun was greeted with prayers and repeated requests: “double the strength of the arm, don't let me go alone”.

Just like the girl in the red hoodie, I walked along the way. Anything could happen on the Botafogo Road. However, unlike the girl in the red hoodie, I was never alone on the way. Between stops, in the text and by bus, I went along as a body in the world, willing to make friends with wolves and meet grannies.

Like someone who brings and carries news, I listened, took notes, observed, asked little so as not to lead the voice I heard. Eyes, ears and heart were attentive to the path. A fluid path, full of edges, crossroads and barricades. A place of intersection where the voice of the wind still speaks in the hearts of the children. We continued along the margins of the city of Rio de Janeiro, almost reaching Baixada Fluminense - the Pavuna region, where the school is located, is the boundary between the city of Rio de Janeiro and the city of São João de Meriti. 

On the margins of Rio, we can find a life pushed into invisibility. A life I wouldn't wish to any child. There was, however, so much enthusiasm for living that the stories lived on the margins were spread around in the pages of diaries.

Ways of Knowing Diaries is a series of notes and thoughts. A tangle of speeches and narratives. It's a fabric made of wide smiles and hugs with short arms. And it is the reaffirmation of life and the claim for good living at school. I've heard that ‘reaffirmation of life’ is the new cliché. So be it! In a marginalised territory, marked by the early death of bodies and dreams, we greet life every day with reading, study, games, workshops and outings. 

The children at the Professor Escragnolle Dória Municipal School gave me back my love of writing and of the classroom. With Cristine Takuá I broadened the concept of classroom and had the courage to break away from the margins established by the curriculum. In general, the process of schooling deterritorialises within the territory. It leaves the child's identity in the background, determines what is important or not to know, determines what to eat, how to dress, it distances what is sacred and imposes new ways of life.

The children and Cristine invited me to trust in life, to observe the treetops and listen to the wind. With them, I was a sumahuman, an ant and a bird. The Living School, expressed in the voice and gestures of Cristine Takuá, is a school for the strengthening of territory, a school of practices and sharing. The strength of a Living School lies in listening and awakening memories. Not being afraid to awaken memories is the greatest of all learning experiences.

No Living School is the same as another, there is no intention of creating standards. The territory and the memories of life present in the many layers stored in the body of time, in the body of the earth and in the bodies-territories point to paths that need to be observed and understood.

Nego Bispo says that”‘when we confluence, we don't cease being us, we become us and other people – we yield”.

What you've read over the past few months were pages that yielded from a teacher's encounter with a wise woman who invited her to embark on a canoe trip. Each text here was preceded by water. From this side of the margin, I say goodbye with asphalt under my feet and water in my eyes. 

Awrê!

See you next school year.

TINY LITTLE STONES – by Veronica Pinheiro

“Tiny little stone from Aruanda – eh!
Such a huge flat rock
Little stone from Aruanda - eh!”

Writing Diaries was an assignment I received from Anna Dantes, the creator of Selvagem, a cycle of studies. At the time, I thought we wouldn't have enough material to publish in 35 texts. The mission became a journey through ways of knowing and enchantment for me. I spent almost 200 days with 420 children a week. It was many days of listening and telling stories. It was 145 pages written with smiles, fears, songs, drawings and hugs.

The school was the thread that sewed my wanderings together in 2024. All the texts written described the experiences and experiments shared with the children. On this penultimate page, however, I would like to talk about the teaching staff that make up the Professor Escragnolle Dória Municipal School. From the kitchen to the gate, all the school staff are educators, as they teach and share knowledge with the children on a daily basis. When it comes to primary schools, there is nothing new about the fact that the teaching body we see is a female body. A body made up of mothers who clean, cook, teach, coordinate and manage a routine full of challenges. Throughout the Ways of Knowing journey, I could also notice Pedreira in the bodies and gestures of these women mothers-teachers. All 14 classes are led by a female teacher; the cleaning, kitchen and gate staff are mostly women; the management team is also made up of women. 

We won't talk here about caring and the reasons why education is a feminine environment in which men are the exponents. In the land of Marias, Josés are applauded – men sign educational proposals and give names to methods. For now, I'll talk about the ethical, social and organic commitment to life that I saw in the vigilant eyes that watched me every day in the Favela da Pedreira. I remember the mistrust in the first few weeks. I welcomed them all knowing that, for a teacher, someone who shares a journey with her is much better than manuals with revolutionary ideas. 

We experience with adults and children: practices of unconfinement, movements to broaden the gaze, weaving of territorial webs, affective proximity with nature, the poetics of backyards, the syntax of the body…

We do not talk to adults and children about: practices of unconfinement, movements to broaden the gaze, weaving of territorial webs, affective proximity with nature, the poetics of backyards, the syntax of the body…

We had a total of 0 lectures throughout the year and 0 pedagogical trainings.

Life happens in a web of ongoing relationships. Our care leaned towards the relationships we established. In a Living School, learning is lived and shared. Curiously, at most of the congresses on playing I attended, nobody was playing. Just as congresses on orality often result in written texts about orality. While calling for a pluriversal and cosmological education, we present neither formula nor form. 

I learnt in this land of women to celebrate tiny little things and to work in silence in order to let land speak for themselves; just like Sun, who rises in silence, knowing exactly what has to be done. Sun doesn't do anything new but exactly the same thing every day, and that's where the generosity lies. An indigenous Macuxi friend told me that Sun is a feminine entity. That's why... at this moment, I pay homage to the sun-women of Pedreira who, on a daily basis, have helped us to conclude this Learning Cycle.

In the complex immensity of Favela da Pedreira, Daniele, Genicelle and Vera are little stones and, at the same time, huge lajedos, flat rocks. Lajedos are geological formations sculpted by time, common in arid and semi-arid places, which are home to pools of water and a diversity of life due to the unique conditions found in these rock formations. In the dryness felt and experienced in the territory where the school is located, I saw shelter and life; a life that was different from the life of the territory, with unique conditions. A life derived from the commitment and love of the teachers and staff. P. Escragnolle Dória municipal school is a lajedo-school of which I am a part, made up of tiny little stones.

My gratitude to the sun women from Pedreira:

Aline Lopes
Analice Lima
Anaquel Albuquerque
Ana Paula Pequeno
Beatriz Ferreira
Conceição Correia
Cristiane Paula
Daniele Oziene Lima
Deise Patrocínio
Denise Lopes
Derli Monteiro
Érika Fraga
Genicelle Colchone
Glória Alencar
Ivone Pacheco
Ivy Passos
Janaína Chaves
Karine Machado
Leidiane de Paula
Lena de Abreu
Lílian Moreira
Lúcia dos Santos
Luciene Justino
Maria José Rodrigues
Michelle Bessa
Miriam Ribeiro
Monique Ribeiro
Rosana Moraes
Sabrina Amarantes
Sandra Helena Santos
Simone Rezende
Sônia Maria Oliveira
Taís Nunes
Thassia Oliveira
Vera Lucia Lavatori

My gratitude to 

Felipe Rodrigues
Iranildo da Silva
Rober da Silva
José Roberto Oliveira
Wagner Clayton Nascimento

LISTEN TO THE CHILDREN – by Veronica Pinheiro

On 15 November 2024, the event is not 420 children from a public school talking to a teacher about their dreams for a living school. The event is: memories of a living school are awakened in 420 children and one teacher. 

In February, one of the things that most caught my attention was the aggressive way in which the children reacted to their classmates' teasing, or how they simply used force to tell other children to stay away. I had never witnessed such young children leading such violent scenes. 

I asked a girl where she learnt to beat people up like that. The answer was: ‘I was beaten up every day by other people, so I learnt how to beat them. By doing what everyone else does."

‘Everybody who?’. This was a question my mum always asked me when I used 'everybody' as the subject of a sentence. And then my mum would say that everyone is a lot of people. And that we should only observe the people we trust. 

Like this girl, I was introduced to the many forms of violence at a young age, while my community was preparing me to be free and happy. Our elders were our masters and teachers. The ancestors were our lap and foundation. Love and kindness were cultivated on a daily basis, to the point where the violence that subjugated the bodies was unable to imprison them.

After listening to the girl who beat up the other children, I asked everyone else throughout the year why they reacted so impetuously. There were two answers: ‘I don't know’ or ‘I need to defend myself’. In the first week of school, I replied to a boy who wanted to know if I was the "keep order" type of person. I told him that I was learning to tread softly on the ground and that I had chosen to be a gentle person. By treading softly on the earth, we look for other ways to walk through the world. And one of them is to walk asking for permission to enter and leave places.

Listening to children is a form of asking for permission. Before telling children what we think about the violence they reproduce, we should try to listen to them. Listening to children was the best thing we could do in 2024. Throughout the year, we, the school's teachers, management and staff, tried to share an environment with the children where they wouldn't have to defend themselves. An environment where they could just be children.

Teacher Janaína was given one of the biggest challenges: she was in charge of a class of 32 students who were unable to say what they felt or wanted. It took many months of listening, breathing exercises and sharing other possible ways of inhabiting the school. We ended the year with appeased children. Janaína's work is admirable. The class is now able to play without fights. I spent two hours with the children in Janaína's class on 14 November, and I was thrilled to see them telling the stories they had created. I then played with them the games they had invented in the Reading Circle.

When I talk about the awakening of a living school, I talk because I have seen children living and smiling in a territory that normalises violence. They are living and can be happy as their memories of life are awakened. For the first time today, 14 November, not a single story written in the narrative-creation class mentioned violence. All, absolutely all of the stories written and told by the children today spoke of kindness, celebration and dreams.

For the first time, I left school on a Thursday, tired from playing and smiling so much. And this is only possible because the life contained in the memories of the territory and the territory-bodies has been calling us to dance and live in times of gentleness. I hope that the awakened memory continues to speak and be heard by my little companions.

JOY IS A VITAL FORCE – by Veronica Pinheiro

Photo: Carol Delgado

At the start of the 2024 school year, I experienced the pain of seeing fear in children's eyes. I've come across this feeling only a few times in my life, but I can sense it in the air. I looked fear in the eye for an eternal moment. That encounter was described in this diary under the title ‘This week I didn't get any notes’. There, I doubted my ability to share care. But my heart full of dreams believed in times of dance. The dance I knew how to dance used to put broad bodies and affections, irreverence and kindness, reverence and memories into motion. My grandfather, an accordion player and a brincante, taught my father, an angoleiro and a brincante, that fear should be warded off by singing. "Singing is prayer! Singing heals! Sing and evil is warded off." The song was sung with voice and body. And from singing came dancing. We sang with our whole bodies. 

When we weren't full-bodied, it was said that we were unwilling. And if we were unwilling, we wouldn't accept anything, not even our favourite food. Two things indicated that the person was in full body: singing and joy. Singing- praying-dancing was as healing as the plants in the yard. This way of being made my community committed to life and not to pain. Far from naivety and ignorance, the people of that community were aware of their pain. Joy was a political, strategic and ancestral position towards healing and the maintenance of life.

In the reading room, through workshops and art, we created sensitive dialogues in an attempt to awaken the sense of also being nature in the urbanised beings we are. While the Municipal School Professor Escragnolle Dória galaxy was expanding, the Ways of Knowing Group from Selvagem was gathering life. ‘While the universe expands, love agglutinates.’ Joy has been our most abundant agglutinator. Before the Ways of Knowing Group arrived at the school in February, Anna Dantes and Madeleine Deschamps presented a worksheet in which a party for the children would be the conclusion of the 2024 Apprenticeship Cycle. Nego Bispo says:

'Our festivities are an instrument for defending our practices, because the festivity is stronger than the Law. The State can't break the ways of life when they are involved in the festivities.’

Photos: Carol Delgado

At the school, we wrapped up the Playing Lights Up the Sun cycle with a party that reaffirmed our practices. A party where our ways of life based on cooperation, joy, abundance and respect could be celebrated. With the children, we experienced a day in which the classroom was more like the slab or the backyard of a house. Each classroom was a world full of games. A day in which joy was the general and specific objective of our planning. By playing and singing, we accomplished the day's task. I haven't got my hands on the records of the party yet. The children took the photos and will tell the story of lighting the sun. For today, I'll just share a few brief words written by happy hands.

Photo: Alice Faria

Joy is the original communication with life, capable of guiding affections and reformulating routes. Joy can deceive fear and death. Where have I seen this? I've seen it in children's eyes. And I've also read it in little notes written by teachers.

Photo: Carol Delgado

We end this page with a little note from a school teacher:

'I must congratulate you on this movement within the school. Even though the resource is external, it's there and you've been making it possible and providing opportunities for different movements in a small corner of Costa Barros.

Ahhhh how I dreamt of seeing other movements in this place that is my starting point.

Stopping, breathing, listening, touching... We've spent years competing with crime. We organise parties with toys so that the children don't have only them as parameters. We give out free cotton candy (many can't afford it and the bandits give it to them).

Studying has always been a form of confrontation.

But this time, another movement is taking place and they can't take that away from the children.

A look from another perspective.

❤️

As a former resident, as a former student and as a work colleague, I'm grateful to have been able to experience this and to witness a utopia that is possible, visible and tangible.’

Miriam Ribeiro

Teacher Miriam Ribeiro is wearing an SUN tiara created by the students during the Costume workshop.
Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

See you next page.

NOTES

¹ Caderno Selvagem – Flecha 6, Tempo e amor
https://selvagemciclo.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CADERNO49_FLECHA_6.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMBCABxXCQ&t=620s&ab_channel=SELVAGEMciclodeestudossobreavida

PLAYING LIGHTS UP THE SUN – by Veronica Pinheiro

Playing lights up the sun. This phrase came out of Carol Delgado's mouth at the end of a meeting. After a long period of instability and insecurity that left children and teachers saddened, we got back together with volunteers and friends to think about how we could restart activities at the school. Where I come from, joy is medicine. At that moment, we wanted to return to the school to share JOY. We planned a month of activities with: a book launch; musical performances; building a bed for planting the vegetable garden; a workshop for teachers and staff; a walk; a costume workshop; photo and film making; theatre; the children's PARTY

At the same time, the Sun Cycle was being shared by Selvagem and the Ways of Knowing Group was at school lighting up the sun. And the children, just like IORI's Sun, longed for dawn again. Despair, however, managed to reach some of them before we did: one little girl has still not returned from her attempt to escape the pain. This is why I reiterate that teachers alone cannot meet all the demands assigned to the school. Educating and schooling are different processes. 

‘It takes a whole village to educate a child’. Have you ever heard this African proverb? provérbio africano? 

We urbanised beings are summoned to disconnection on a daily basis. In the city, this relationship grinding machine, people only look after their own lives and things, often looking after things more than their own lives. Disconnection and fear make life in the city increasingly segmented and ill. 

I find it curious that in the city there are spaces to play. In the city, there's room for everything. Disconnection creates a market, people pay to laugh, to be entertained and also to play. When I found out in 2022 that the Selvagem cycle of studies on life had a community, I soon signed up. And I also soon got to know this community up close. And by getting up close, I was able to connect with people, stories and territories. 

In this movement of connections, some of these people arrived with such an incredible life background that all I could think about was inviting them to play. I was raised playing what I saw adults do while playing. Joy is a very sacred medicine for Afro-diasporic communities. When we play, we activate our connection with all that makes us up. 

As usual, I spent 30 minutes explaining why it was so important that October's activities vibrate kindness and abundance of joy. I talked about the importance of playing with children. I resorted to Bantu philosophy to explain that each child is a living sun, and that walking freely on Earth is only possible if all the suns are lit. Carol summarised the talk with a smile: ‘Playing lights up the sun’. 

That sentence made everything simpler. And it was by playing that we got to this page of the diary. 

We played at storytelling: With Tania Grillo at the launch of her book Fora onde? [Out Where?] Fora onde?

We played at a music festival with John Caldwell and Anselmo Salles.

We played at building beds and planting a vegetable garden with Otávio Souza.

We played and went for a walk with Rafael Cruz, Tatiana Mello and Wagner Manoel.

We played at being birds and planting freely with Taiana Simões.

We played at creating costumes and characters with Clarissa Viegas and the Ohlograma studio.

We played with Carol Delgado to make photographs and videos, and
we played with Paula Novaes and her theatre making puppets.

We played with the Bondinho Park at the Sugarloaf Mountain.

What about the party?

Next week our Solar Party will take place.

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

Dear Cris,

Last week I heard one of the most beautiful sentences in the world:

‘Now I have a good story to tell!’

Vinícius, 11, facing the sea, 396 metres above sea level, under the spring Sun, looked me in the eye and, smiling, said: ‘Now I have a good story to tell. When I have a child, I'm going to tell my kid that I saw the sea from the top of a mountain. I'm going to tell them ‘ behave yourself because whenever there's a trip to Sugarloaf Mountain, you'll be invited’. Although I don't behave that much. I don't really deserve it. But I'm very happy to be here today.’

To the sound of the almost midday wind, I was able to tell Vinícius that life isn't about merit, it's about sharing. And that I was very happy to share that day of good memories with him.

We left school that day to visit the Sugarloaf Mountain and, minutes after we left, terror tried to spread through the school zone. Vinícius heard what was happening in the Costa Barros neighbourhood via text message. Even though he was aware of everything, Vinícius knew that he was facing the possibility of creating his own memories.

Cris, the children are creating memories other than pain and despair! At the same time as ancestral memories are awakened, new memories are created. These are seeds of life, my friend. Seeds of a Living School that you are sowing throughout the world.

We were with children aged between 8 and 11. They were pure joy, dancing and singing the whole way round. Throughout the visit, I received notes and whispers asking me to take them to the beach. The explanation that accompanied the requests was so unquestionable that I didn't hesitate: ‘Miss V., we want to meet the sea from below too. 

We went down to the beach and I watched everyone's movements. Most of the children had never seen the sea. They took off their shoes, folded up their shorts and trousers. And, like turtles recently hatched, they ran towards the sea. They played with the salty waters, who sometimes watched the children, just like me, and sometimes played tricks on them, surprising them with fast waves. As they ran around imitating the movement of the tides, my little companions stopped to taste the sea salt in their mouths. And their mouths seemed bigger, because their smiles were wider than on other days.

As I write, my smile also widens. And with a broad smile I say goodbye. 

I think I'd love to accompany the children of the Guarani Living School on an encounter with the sea. It would be lovely to hear Papá recount memories of Nhe'ëry and to hear you sing to Nhamandu.

I hope we have good stories to tell throughout our lives on this plane.

With smiles, 

Verô

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

Greetings, dear Cris.

Your words always arrive at dawn. With them, my eyes long to be the sea and they water while dancing among your "delicating" words. I salute the guardian spirits of the beings who keep you on a good path. 

It's been raining here for days. I've heard some humans complaining about the rain; the birds, however, are so happy that they sing all day long. Along with the plants in the backyard, they remind me that the Earth can also play with the sky. With the birds I've learnt to celebrate the days. At home I've learnt to celebrate the cycles.

Listening to your talk about the consecration of Ka'a reminds me of the festivities back home. The festivities would bring the whole community together and my family would take part in all the processes of the festivities. From sewing the clothes to preparing the food; from organising the party to the day's music. At the party, some would prepare instruments and play. Everything was set up with a lot of concentration and prayers. The festivity was a reaffirmation of our way of life. My mother sewed for the whole community, my father's father and my father prepared instruments for the whole community. Prayers, blessings and food were meant for the whole community. Nowadays, around here, everything is sold. From clothes to instruments, from food to party tickets. 

We are working to awaken the memory of collective strength among the children. Amongst many things, there will also be a party. Since October 3rd, we've been celebrating the lives of the school's children through workshops, musical performances, a book launch, outings and planting activities. 

Dear friend, it seems that wind's voice has once again spoken to the residents of Complexo da Pedreira. Otávio and his boys, Davi and Marcos, have joined us. Otávio and his ‘Magic Formula for Peace’ have scared hunger away from dozens of families. Otávio's secret is only in the name of the project he leads, because he shares everything generously with everyone who approaches him. 

Remember when I said that there was a strip of green between Pedreira's complex of favelas that was taken care of by a man? I found the guardian of that swidden. In a region with the second lowest human development index in the city of Rio de Janeiro, there is a man who is full of green. Soil-plant-man suspended and hidden in the green on the edge of the asphalt. While food insecurity circulates daily among the local population, Otávio, who has reconnected with the land, takes care of the earth and is taken care of by the earth.

I continue to believe that greening, growing trees, activating and awakening memories is a job for a community. In Brazil, only 34.5 per cent of municipal schools have a green area, and the majority of schools with a green area have more grass than vegetation. Otávio, a collective man, has a daily relationship with the earth and agreed to dream and work with us and the children in the school yard. Our dream for the school is the same as Isael Maxakali's:‘Our dream is to take the land and recover it. Because it needs healing, it needs treatment. Because the earth is alive. The earth speaks, the earth looks at us and the earth cries out. (...) That's why we want to reforest.’".

Tayana and Gerrie are also in this canoe full of seeds. While Otávio teaches how to plant in delimited areas, Tayana and Gerrie plant out with the children in the backyard. As a result, we already have a vegetable garden and many sown areas around the school. In this movement to reconnect with the earth, I can see the joy in the children's eyes. The little ones, aged seven, bring extra clothes in their backpacks, waiting for the time to go to the swidden-backyard, the future little forest-school. There is also celebration in Ivone's eyes, a school employee and resident of the community, who gets emotional when she sees the fertile soil, seeds and seedlings arrive. Ivone also listened to wind's voice and, with her memories of home awakened, she has been helping us to plant and look after the backyard.

The backyard is becoming a school within the school. In it, learning lies in the relationships between humans and non-humans. We have gained a classroom under the shade of a leafy Yellow Siris. All our planting movements have been accompanied by a hummingbird that sings and observes us from many angles. 

Our days have been like this: earth in our hands and celebration in our eyes, to the sound of birds. The children are learning with their hands and are creating memories in their bodies together with the body of the earth. The celebration in the children's eyes has brought the school community together and my heart has been strengthened by this.

I bid you farewell, my dear teacher, wishing that birds tell you secrets.

And that the enchanted beings guard your paths.

Awrê.

________________

Otávio Souza, creator of the Fórmula Mágica da Paz (Magic Formula for Peace) project, started as a self-provisioning strategy for residents who became more impoverished during the 2020 pandemic. Like Otávio, many started picking up discarded food from CEASA Rio bins; however, together with his friend Matheus de Souza, he decided to focus on the land and start planting on a plot within the favela. Today, as well as learning how to look after the land, the project has helped young people gain access to an income and fresh food.

Tayana Simões, biologist and environmental educator.

Gerrie Schrik is an educator and translator, always hiking, a birdwatcher and storyteller, who loves reading and art. She lives in a small agroforest on the edge of a stream in the Piracicaba River basin. She has been guiding and technically organising the planting activities at the school.

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

Jenipapo-Kanindé children's choir, at Tapera das Artes

My dear teacher, 

I bring good news from the Jenipapo-Kanindé lands. On the banks of the Enchanted Lagoon I personally met Viviane and Adelsin, and yes, they are very special. The Good Waters brought us here. Here, dreams and life coexist. The children sing, the young people dream and the teachers smile.  

Viviane and Adelsin told me about the Casinhas de Cultura [Culture Little Houses] and how they got to know Tapera das Artes, a ‘School of Life’ that, through music and the arts, promotes enchantment and significant changes in children's lives.

We spent two days meeting teachers, educators, artists and children. There were many of us, but at times I had the feeling that we were one. Joy and love are forces that truly move the present day, while at the same time they heal the yesterday and prepare the morrow. Here I have witnessed beautiful movements of confluence and heard many stories of memories awakening. From lace to singing, ceramics to the bamboo fife, the strengthening of the territory dialogues directly with intergenerational relations. 

Here I've shared a little of our journey and told you about how we've been paddling the canoe together with Selvagem Cycle. I talked about the Living Schools and that I only came because you built the path. I'm very moved by the connections that have been made. I'm coming back stronger and believing that dialogue with teachers and schools is a possible path on this journey of re-enchantment. School education is often a process of docilising bodies and inhibiting freedom of thought. But here in Aquiraz I have met teachers from the land, masters who have neither lost their connection with the territory nor with natural life. We're on the second day of the meeting and the same 400 teachers from yesterday are here today to think about how not to let the curriculum take away children's relationship of love towards life. 

The Pacoti River and the Catú River were also brought into the conversation. Because we have lost our connection with nature, we are forced to outsource natural learning relationships. The children of Aquiraz have less and less connection with the rivers, and many of them now only learn to swim if their families have money to pay for swimming lessons. What used to be a relationship between child and river, a natural learning relationship, is now a commercial relationship between student and swimming instructor. It was lovely to hear that the teachers in Aquiraz acknowledge that the waters are teachers.

It's beautiful to know that there are Living Schools and Schools of Life; culture points and culture houses; teachers who dream and dreamers who accomplish things. It's so beautiful to feel that we can continue confluencing like the rivers of Aquiraz. As my teacher, Nego Bispo, used to say: ‘A river doesn't stop being a river because it confluences with another river; on the contrary, it turns into itself plus other rivers, it becomes stronger.

I leave these Jenipapo-Kanindé lands in a spiritful state and strengthened by the songs of the Jenipapo-Kanindé children. Surrounded by the sound of the children's singing, Silvia's blessings and ceramic whistles made at Tapera das Artes, I say goodbye. 

See you on Saturday, my teacher.

From left to right: Veronica Pinheiro, Viviane Fontes, Adelsin, Lucilene Silva

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

I salute your existence, 

I thank the Guardians who watch over you along the way.

I always read your words at dawn, together with the rising sun. It's almost a rite. I've been focussed like the Ant teachers, carrying what is necessary, trusting the path and those who have walked ahead. Your words are like Mrs Cassiana's hugs and prayers: they welcome me and strengthen me. When I was a child, my feet were turned inwards. Dona Cassiana prayed over my feet and ankles so that they would grow strong and not falter along the way. I want you to know, my friend, that my feet and ankles falter less on the way since you arrived.

The path is made by walking, and along the path that was made, I have met people who are willing to think about and build possible futures. I think we learn and teach continuously, so everyone needs to be involved in the learning process, not just teachers, parents, educators and schools. What is an architect teaching when he builds a school? What is a doctor teaching when he treats a person without looking them in the eye and prescribes medication without examining them? What is a restaurant teaching when it asks a customer to leave because their appearance is frightening other customers?

Life happens in a web of continuous relationships. And humans have chosen to relate to life in a way that causes a lot of frustration and sadness. 

My master Nego Bispo used to say: ‘I'm not a human being, I'm a quilombola. I live by being involved and by sharing. I coexist with snakes, rats, bats, frogs, fish, flowers, trees and stones. Humans don't even live with themselves.’

Since I can wish not to be human, I can also live in abundant relationship with everything that exists. And two forces encourage me in this process: joy and enchantment. Contrary to what some people may think, a joyful and enchanted person is not an innocent or alienated person. A joyful and enchanted person is a person immune to the harm caused by the process of civilisation. That's why I play with children, read to them and tell them stories; I want them to be happy. In the spaces between the harshness implanted by the monoculture of thought, we are sowing a living school, just like the little ants that take seeds and stick them in the cracks of tree branches. This plastered civilisation system is full of cracks, and if we can't bring it down at once, we can weaken it. And the best way to weaken the monoculture of thought is to strengthen our territories and all the life that inhabits them. Let's sow cosmological schools, with lots of organic, green and loving narratives.

I dream and work so that, in the next Ways of Knowing cycles, more people will be encouraged to be ant-people. Many people talk about their relationship with life and don't even relate to other humans. Ways of Knowing are something you experience, aren't they? I dream of everyone making a real commitment to the happiness of the children of our country and the world. The teacher ants teach us about cooperation: they work and organise collectively, putting their intelligence and effort towards the benefit of the collective. I dream of the days when being an ant will be enough for many people. 

A little ant hug,

Veronica

LETTER TO CRISTINE TAKUÁ – by Veronica Pinheiro

Hello, dear Cris.

Life around here has become much happier since I met you. Having you around on this journey is a great gift.

We're doing well at school. It feels like we've entered a new cycle, a time of life. Even though we're tired, we're happier than we were at the beginning of the year. I've spent the last few days thinking about the words of teacher Creuza Krahô about safeguards and time. These words arrived at the exact moment when I recognised that I need to reconnect, wisely, with the safeguarding of times and with Time. 

In these movements of awakening memories, my memories and the memories of my people weave deep dialogues with me and with the children. 

The most sacred place I've found in recent times is among the children. The intersection of time happens to them. 

At home, Time has a name and a body: Iroko. Time is strength. Iroko is the very representation of the dimension of time, little known to living and dead beings, born or yet to be born. Guardian of ancestry, Iroko governs time and strengthens the links between the past and the present. Iroko is the first tree ever planted on Earth. Mrs Cassiana, the old woman who prayed over me as a child, used to say that the tree is the body of time. I've been thinking about time and trees.

There are hardly any trees on the route from my house to the school. The trees have been removed and, as a result, we no longer see the body of time. And if we don't see it, we start to forget it. By forgetting, we lose the caring relationship with it. 

I met Xamoi Alcindo Wherá Tupã through you. He used to claim that we had unlearned to listen to the trees. In this mail, I want to introduce you to the trees that safeguard me on my way to school. I've already talked about the dangers and precariousness in other texts; I want to talk about the trees. 

When you reach the Costa Barros milestone, next to the railway line, you'll see the greenest corner of the entire route. This green corner is a hillside inhabited by a few people, lots of trees, birds and possums. There is a yard at the top, visible to everyone that passes by, full of fruit trees, and a young avocado tree guards its entrance. 

Following the Botafogo road towards the underground, my friend, Water Chestnut and Oiti trees will accompany you along a beautiful green corridor. There will be hazards on the pavement, things that might scare your eyes, but try to look at the trees. You'll pass fragrant Brazilian Pepper trees, Lead trees and young and mature Indian-Almond trees. When you see an Elder Ficus Gomelleira on your left, smile at her, she will be happy to see you. For the axé people, the Gomelleira is Iroko, who makes the bridge between Ayê, the earth, and Orum, the sky. She is the body-tree of time.

When you see the tree, look to the right and go round the corner surrounded by fragrant Boldos. The Cotton Tree will welcome you at the school gate. The children and I will be there. 

May you come in a good moment.

We await your arrival with clay in our hands and green in our eyes,

Verô

THE WISDOM OF AFRICAN SYMBOLS – by Veronica Pinheiro

Adinkras: painting workshop and creation of co-operation games

‘Those who know where they came from don't get lost on the way’. Every time my father took me out, he repeated this proverb. He trained me to pay attention to the paths. ‘Don't get distracted on the way.’ When we arrived at the place we wanted to go, I would be asked what I had seen and if I knew how to get back. When I mentioned the colour of a wall or that I'd seen a popcorn seller, my father would tell me that I should pay attention to permanent things, like a big tree or a grocery store. I should also pay attention to the shape of the wall, the design of the grilles and not just the colours, because the colours could change and the popcorn man might not be there when I got back.

Photos: Veronica Pinheiro

My grandmother was born free, in 1910. But my grandmother's mother was born at a time when people were sold as goods in Brazil. Our stories were an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. Every piece of information was precious: prayers, rites, circles, recipes. My father knew that it was important to look at the grilles, and he and I thought that the reason was that hardly anyone changed the façades because the ironwork on the façades was too expensive. My father and I missed some important information when looking at the grilles: they could contain African symbols with important messages. Many Africans who came to Brazil were expert blacksmiths. The enslaved Africans brought knowledge and technologies with them. Among this knowledge was the expertise of West African iron metallurgy, which had a significant influence on the social and economic relations of this population during the diaspora. Nobody tells that to the children!

The technologies carried on the body were articulated with sacred memories of the relationship with life. Iron, for example, was not a natural resource, but a resource guarded by Gu, a very ancient ancestor. Gu, the blacksmith god, taught men how to forge iron. Gu's teachings expanded the ways in which the Fon people, from the kingdom of Dahomey in Benin, related to the earth and to life. In Brazil, Gu appears as Ogum - representative of courage, technology, hard work, hunting, agriculture, iron and, if necessary, war. The knowledge and the relationship with metallurgy were organic, sacred and structuring of a cosmology. However, Euro-colonialism, which has never respected the life and existence of beings, in addition to kidnapping and enslaving African people, saw this relationship as another way of enriching and hurting the Earth with the extraction of gold. 

Go around… Go around… Go around, my Saint Anthony.

I am running around to get to talk about the wisdom of the symbols contained in the Adinkras, a graphic communication brought from Ghana. While I write, I realise how much I go around when talking about a subject. I don't know how it works for children. But I haven't learnt to be any different yet. 

The territory we know today as Ghana was a region known as the Gold Coast (Togo, Nigeria, Benin and Ghana). The enslaved Africans brought from this region belonged to the Fanti, Ashanti, Ewe, Fon, Egbe, Youruba and Igbo peoples. They became known in Brazil as ‘negros de mina’, black people from the mines. They were men of such great wisdom and knowledge that they communicated with their relatives through the symbols on the façades of their houses and on pieces made from iron. To this day we find Adinkra symbols on door and window grilles in Rio de Janeiro. Besides being an aesthetic choice made by the blacksmiths, the symbols communicated that no one was alone on the path. ‘Pay attention to the path.’

Photos: Veronica Pinheiro

In the workshop on painting and creating collaborative games, I invited the children to pay attention to the grilles. They are not allowed to photograph the territory, for security reasons. But I photographed some gates from the street where I live, showed them and they told me that they saw these symbols on the way. I told them that the symbols communicate memories of an ancient people who gave rise to our people. We read the book Quanto de África tem no dia de Alguém. We re-read Os tesouros de Monifa. And I invited them to notice the many messages of life that surround us. Life communicates all the time, it's just that we have lost the ability to understand. But if we have lost it, we can learn again.

Photos: Veronica Pinheiro

Curiously, the Adinkra that the children identified with the most is Sankofa. Curiously, Sankofa is the most present symbol on the grilles of doors and windows. The bird looking back is also graphically represented by shapes that resemble the representation of the heart. Sankofa summarises the idea of the ancestral future. The proverb that accompanies it says: ‘It's never too late to go back and pick what was left behind’. Sankofa symbolises the wisdom of learning from the past in order to build the future. And this message has been on the path ever since the blacksmith brothers arrived in Brazil. 

‘Pay attention to the path. You need to know how to get back,’ my father used to say. 

Regular school teaches us to look ahead, to the future. But the so-called future of humanity has scared the children. So I invite my little companions to look to the past. Not the past of slavery. But the cosmological past, which insists on communicating with us. The past of the technology of engagement with life.  

I remembered Cris Takuá, my teacher, and her teachings. I think we're awakening memories here.

THE BEAUTY OF CHILDREN'S ANSWERS – by Veronica Pinheiro

Ọkàn ríran ju ojú lọ
The heart can see much deeper than the eyes

Education happens in everyday relationships, beyond the walls of the school. In the classroom, gestures, attitudes, tone of voice and gaze are just as important, if not more so, than curriculum content. The information contained in gestures educates, welcomes and gives hope. The curriculum educates for a hypothetical, future life, it prepares for tests that perhaps one day a student will take. Gestures educate for the present, dilating the complexity of the record that seeks to understand everything that happens in the environment and in the body itself, through relationships. Lydia Hortélio says, and I agree:

‘No-one was born to take entrance exams. We were born to be people, to express ourselves fully, freely, with all the talents that human beings have.’ 

In times of emergency, I think about how to align gestures and content. In times of emergency, how can we make regular schools a place where children and teachers can be people, expressing themselves fully and freely? My dear master Nego Bispo used to say that, in this war of denominations, we need to learn the game of countering colonial words as a way of weakening them. Weaken what they have said about us and look for the understanding and the depth of who we are in our ancestry. The school as a place where denominations are taught separates those who teach from those who learn, as if a 'discente' (student) could only be a pupil and a 'docente' (teacher) could only be a tutor. 

The term ‘discente’, in Portuguese, has its origins in Latin, deriving from the term ‘discens’, which is the present participle of the verb ‘discere’, meaning ‘to learn’. And ‘docente’ comes from the Latin ‘docens’, which is the present participle of the verb ‘docere’, meaning ‘to teach’. In the dynamics of everyday life, we are sharing people. Teaching and learning is a relationship of life. Sharing is much more than playing social roles: there is no immobility in sharing relationships. We continually teach and learn from each other. As the months go by, the relationship with the children in the Pedreira favela shows me that the beauty of the children's answers is restructuring the way I relate to them and to life. The children hold me in their short arms with little letters, drawings and spoken words. They teach me how to breathe in the midst of the capitalist smoke that suffocates life. 

‘Miss V., your earrings are cool’.

‘Some people think my earrings are weird.’

‘Grown-ups, right? We think they're beautiful. They have messages, right?’

'All her earrings have a message. The nature ones, the village ones, the shell ones.’

‘Are you seriously looking at my earrings? And how do you know they have a message?’

‘Because we felt it.’

‘I didn't feel anything,’ said Alessandro. ‘It's just a leaf.’

‘Yes. It's aya.’

Because of my earrings, this week we talked about Adinkras. Adinkras, graphic symbols originating from the Akan culture in Ghana, are an example of how forms of communication and recording don't have to be subject to conventional written language. These symbols hold philosophies, memories and stories, functioning as a type of visual writing full of knowledge and cultural identity. Our imagination, built by colonialist education, has conditioned us to think that orality was the only pillar of record for the transmission of knowledge in Africa, but it wasn't. There are many different types of African and Amerindian writing. 

The Adinkras are written to be read with the heart and not with the eyes. The suffix ‘kra’ is translated as soul. These symbols are related to communication with ancestors. Adinkra is like a farewell to the soul. The term ‘dinkra’ means ‘to say goodbye’ or ‘to bid farewell’. In it, those who remain tell those who have gone that they can go in peace, because they have learnt the teachings from the heart and know what to do to keep going. ‘Aya’ is an Adinkra symbol that represents a fern leaf. The word also means ‘I'm not afraid of you’. It symbolises resistance, physical strength. It is associated with the idea of overcoming difficulties and adapting to adversity. 

‘Miss V., to whom are you saying you're not afraid?'

‘I didn't get it.'

‘Aya means I'm not afraid of you. Who's “you”? Who are you not afraid of? And do you have to wear the earring to say you're not afraid?’

I didn't dare answer at first. After a pause, Ester continued:

‘Miss V., everyone is afraid, but when you grow up, it'll pass!’

SOWING WORDS – by Veronica Pinheiro

Seed paper workshop, poetry and seed planting
Talk about dreams and mouths that devour the world

Photo: Wagner Lúcio

"Miss V., is arugula a plant or a tree?"

"Arugula is an edible plant. Do you want to plant arugula seeds?"

"Yes, I do. Arugula is a beautiful name. It has a woman's name. Like Ursula. But it starts with an ‘A’ for ‘ Amanda’ and for ‘Adele’."

"Indeed! Arugula is a beautiful name. Do you want to plant the arugula seed because you want to plant the word ‘Arugula’?"

"No. I want to plant the word 'Saudade' [Longing] with an 's' for 'Sofia'. But I don't want a tree. I want the word ‘saudade’ to be just a little plant."

Alice and I have this feeling of saudade, of longing. She cries every day at the end of class because she's afraid of being forgotten at school. She arrives smiling. She eats lunch. She plays. Studies. Chats. But when the carers start arriving at 5pm and the children are called by their names to leave the school, Alice cries. Every day, the girl justifies herself as if she's bothering us. Alice's crying doesn't bother anyone. The other children at school, teachers, staff and headmistresses embrace Alice and her tears. She cries with saudade. Alice's mum enchanted herself last year. The girl is afraid of being lonely. 

Alice and I have a secret: she can pick any of my toys and take them home whenever she wants to distract herself and laugh out loud with her eyes closed. Alice has small eyes and when she laughs it's almost impossible to see her eyes. Alice's eyes speak more than her mouth. However, on seed planting day she decided to talk. And talk a lot.

The workshop ‘Sowing Words’ took place over four meetings. We spent a month collecting all the discarded sheets of paper from the school in a box in the reading room. At the first meeting, we shared with the children the stories of the trees that are chewed up by tree-eating mouths to turn into paper. In Brazil, the trees most commonly used for paper production are eucalyptus and pinus. These trees are fast-growing. Why do they need fast-growing trees? The children answer:

"Because we use too much paper and the factory is in a hurry." Arthur, 8 years old.

All trees have a substance called cellulose in their cells – paper is produced from cellulose pulp. Monoculture plantations of these two trees have been taking over the Brazilian countryside. Pinus and eucalyptus are considered exotic trees because they are not native to Brazil, that is, they are not part of the biome in which they are planted. Those who represent companies call monoculture a ‘planted forest’. This is the information that generally and officially reaches schools. On the other hand, environmentalists and organisations fighting for land prefer to call the plantations a ‘green desert’ and reaffirm that monocultures cannot be considered ‘forests’ due to the small biodiversity within them. In addition, traditional communities and small farmers, based on their direct relationship with the land, defend the perspective that plantations of these species on an industrial scale can generate drastic hydrological impacts. Monocultures of eucalyptus and pinus contribute to reducing the flow of rivers and streams.

This conversation began with a piece of paper taken out of the rubbish bin. The paper went back to the notebook, the shop, the factory, the planted tree. We ended the first meeting wondering if we needed that much paper. 

The school we know is a Western invention that defends specific interests. The school model practised is inconsistent with the discourse of preservation and care for nature that we superficially try to apply. Would a paperless school be possible? If the schools made their own paper, would they waste so many sheets? As a child, I used to leave the glass of milk almost half full. My mum used to say that I only did that because I didn't realise how much work it was to put milk in the glass. 

Photo: Sabrina Amarante

At the second meeting, we began to prepare the discarded paper to be blended. The paper was shredded by the children and soaked in water for 24 hours. ‘Auntie, aren't we going to plant today?’ I spent the whole day answering this question. In general, we talk about how something is done and move on to a concluding activity. Skipping steps gives children the impression that we humans don't need to wait. To liquefy the paper, we have to wait for the next meeting. Between meetings, Alice became more interested in the idea of planting seed paper.

We follow the steps for paper preparation. Blending, moulding, adding seeds, drying. The mainstream school has become the place where we learn with our eyes and ears. The rest of the body is almost always left out of the process. The body produces complex thoughts and memories. Letting the body build responses to challenges without telling a child all the time what they need to do is allowing them to trust themselves. Some leaves got too thick and didn't dry well. One group of children didn't divide the amount of seed properly, which resulted in seed paper without seeds. When making this paper, you can choose the seeds of any plants you wish; we had seeds of guava, arugula, watercress, daisies, carrots, tomatoes and parsley.

After it's done, you can use the seed paper for invitations, stationery, gifts, biodegradable confetti, business cards... At school, with the children, we wrote poetry, dreams and beautiful words with earth inks on the paper. The soil from the school yard and the Costa Barros ravines is the same as the paint used in our drawings. We distributed the seed paper among the children. Most of them wrote ‘PEACE for pedreira’. I read the words forest, love and money over and over again. I understand why the word money appears so often. Having something to eat and living with dignity is still the dream of many children. Among many painted words and written drawings, Alice worries about the size of the plant she's going to sow. 

The words, texts and drawings were planted in pots and in backyards, at school and at their homes. Those who have a yard at home took seeds that turn into trees. Those who like flowers took daisy seeds. Carrot and tomato seeds were also chosen very often. Alice was the only one who chose a seed by the name. She thought ‘arugula' was a nice name. The paper that had once been a tree now held seeds that would return to the earth through the children's hands. Recycling, drawing and painting were just the path. What I really wanted was to talk about sowing, sowing dreams with words and gestures. I really wanted to say that we need to look after our imagination ( of what we dream and desire) the way we look after a seed. Look after the seeds until they germinate, grow and become trees. Then look after the trees so that nobody overthrows them. Sowing words is serious business. Where I come from, a word is the blossoming of the voice of ancient speech. Since it is the strength of ancient speech, it is the dynamic foundation of life.

Photo: Teacher Míriam Ribeiro

The Selvagem Ways of Knowing pathway is a route of involvement. It's impossible to get involved with a place without getting involved with the stories of that place and the people who live there. Involvement is not about telling the other person what to do, but about making yourself available to rework on possibilities and paths, together. When we make ourselves available to listen, the other person will talk about the things that are taking up a lot of space in their chest. And it's precisely those things, which take up a lot of space, that give meaning to life, because life is made up of what abounds. 

May we be, then, abundant and sowers of good and beautiful words.

WHY SCHOOL? – by Veronica Pinheiro

"Miss V.'s doll is prettier because she's been playing with clay for longer".
José, 7 years old

Last week my father asked me why I always end up going back to work at schools. We had coffee in the late afternoon. I tried to tell him what I'm going to try to tell you here. 

The school has become the main agency for human (de-/con-)formation in Brazil: as an arm of the State, it is present in peripheries, hamlets and quilombos. There were 47.3 million children and adolescents enrolled in schools in the country in 2023, according to the School Census. Dialogue with basic education is urgent, since more than twenty percent of Brazil's total population is linked to a school unit. It becomes even more urgent because the school population is composed of the most vulnerable layer of society: children. And this dialogue is not exclusive to parents and educators. Economists, artists, physicists, astronomers, musicians... all of society should be committed to the future of education and childhood. Children are the most vulnerable to climate crises and all existing social crises. Changing the course of our country's childhoods is the only way to make the future possible. 

There's a proverb that says:

“‘We don't inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."¹

Textbooks still talk about hydroelectric power without mentioning the impacts caused by hydroelectric plants on life. I always remember Ailton Krenak saying that nature is not ‘a natural resource’, a storehouse from which we take things. This information needs to reach schools. Adults, as entities of nature, need to weave dialogues with children. A dialogue between living beings. The colonialist system is at the service of a structured, universalist, oppressive way of thinking, and it knows exactly what it's doing. It has no interest in creating real prospects for the future. The State which regulates education in Brazil is the same State which knows that every 24 hours 320 children and adolescents are sexually exploited in the country. The State at the service of colonialism is dead. It's our duty, as living people, to weave dialogues about life. Structures serve agendas; schools serve people. And because it serves people directly, it needs life. 

We, who have been playing around here for longer, can and should share with children possible ways to build ‘dolls’ and futures. I read in an education magazine that, in the United States, the same architects who designed prisons designed schools. The schools I studied in could easily have been used as locations for films set in prisons: they had high walls, bars on staircases, bars in corridors and bars in pavilions. We called the annex to the building where I went to secondary school ‘Carandiru’. 

In Brazil, only 34.5 per cent of municipal schools have a green area². The schools are pure cement; no natural light; no natural ventilation. If we follow the logic of 7-year-old José's thinking, architects, people who have been playing at designing for a long time, could design more beautiful schools and propose to institutions, in a technical way, projects that respect children's lives and nature. An architecture for the sake of good living for children and the school community. Bringing up the green, the trees, activating and awakening memories is work for a whole community. One teacher with 35 children can't break cement to plant a tree. That's why I went back to school with the Selvagem Ways of Knowing Group. I went back with a community.

We're still discussing things that should already be being practised. Those of us who have been playing here for longer have this habit of discussing things instead of practising them. It's a habit of those who have been schooled by colonialism. 

Colonialism distributes people into age groups, segregates them and says that schools are for teachers and pupils. If we borrow the world from our children, and they are at school, that's where we should be too, learning from those who lent it to us, learning how to give back what we borrowed. Being together in confluence with children shouldn't be a metaphor. Interaction and reciprocity are present in all natural phenomena. Contact is necessary for the maintenance of life. We live because life has a sensitive and super elaborate web of contact and co-operation³. 

At this point, we unite Nego Bispo's thinking with that of the boy José: if life is circular and it thrives with sharing, the experience converges in the condition of support for the grandchildren's generation. 

To summarise the answer, I can hope that the hand that trains also teaches to be free.

 _______

¹ A proverb credited to indigenous people from what we now call North America.

² ² Premise of a school. Green area, a space in the school's domain with vegetation or grass, free of sealing, which fulfils an educational, ecological, landscaping or recreational function, improving the aesthetic, functional and environmental quality of the school. Its pedagogical use is recommended through the development of environmental education projects, such as vegetable gardens, gardens, orchards, plant nurseries and ornamental beds.

³“…a simbiose é ‘simplesmente a convivência com contato físico de organismos de espécies diferentes. Parceiros na simbiose, companheiros na simbiontes subsistem literalmente tocando um ao outro ou mesmo um dentro do outro, no mesmo lugar e no mesmo tempo.”

Margulis, Lynn. Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution. New York: Basic Books, 1998.

THE LORD OF THE BACKYARD – by Veronica Pinheiro

The backyards I knew were run by ladies. Backyard ladies. I grew up without a backyard to call my own. I did, however, immerse myself in my grandmother Dona Irene's backyard every week. A yard full of plants, trees and water. Plants to eat, to bathe with, to make tea with, to bless and to delight the eyes with. Backyards are suspended places where you play at being until it's time to be. Like me, most of my little companions on this journey of awakening memories in Favela da Pedreira don't have a backyard at home. 

Walking through quilombos and indigenous villages I keep thinking about backyards, terreiros and the absence of communal places in peripheral urban spaces. The absence of these spaces to play influences the sense of community, because when people play, they act out the world around them and the worlds they carry in their memories. By playing, the past and the present are reinvented. Playing is not exclusive to childhood: where I come from, women, men, stars, plants and animals play. Incarnate and enchanted beings also play. It was common to look up at the sky and say that the sun was hiding; to say that the trees were dancing... that the wind was singing. It was also common to play with the entities at home.

The Professor Escragnolle Dória Municipal School has a large yard that is poorly used due to security reasons. The backyard is the school's most vulnerable space, exposed to the weather and 'stray bullets'. If children from the outskirts don't have a yard at home and don't have communal spaces, where can they play? I turn the reading room into a backyard, a wild backyard with a bonfire and moonlight. We understood that the outings organised by the Learning Group in conjunction with the school also needed to be moments for playing. When walking with the children around the city of Rio de Janeiro, we realised that there were profound movements among them to broaden their view of themselves and their territory, to self-regulate their emotions and impulses, and to foster a sense of community. Organically, when they leave school, we see ‘rowdy’ students becoming leaders, taking on the care of their peers who need support. One child takes another by the hand and offers to spend the whole day by the side of the classmate who is scared or anxious. 

The backyard is the outside, the place of encounters and affective, sacred, communal and festive constructions. Our outings are an invitation to go outwards. And some people have very kindly collaborated so that we can go out safely and with a proper structure. We went to Quinta da Boa Vista with the financial support of a former pupil of the school. Mr Altair studied at Escragnolle in the 1980s and, when he heard that we were taking the children on nature outings, he readily offered to pay for the bus and snacks. Mr Altair and his wife were the backyard hosts, just like at the quilombo festivities. Many backyards were opened that morning. 

Taiana Simões¹ opened the door to the Quintais Brincantes, bringing Bia Jabor and Rafael Cruz to play. Bia is already part of the Selvagem community and Rafael is inviting us to play in UNIRIO's backyards. Quinta da Boa Vista would just be our location on earth.

Taiana, after the picnic and the walk, said:

‘The story tells us that a long, long time ago, in this very same land, there lived a gentleman called Quintas. Mr Quintas loved his backyard and took great care of everything that grew there. He loved it so much and cared for it so much that it was the most beautiful thing one could ever see. And that yard wasn't just about beauty. All the fruit that grew there was somehow very different from anywhere else. They were huge and very, very sweet indeed! They were so big that the oranges were as big as the heads of the children running around, and the watermelons were the size of truck wheels.

There was so much fruit, so big and delicious, that Mr Quintas' backyard provided food for the whole community around him. Whether it was people or birds, monkeys or skunks, everyone who passed by had something to eat and a good chat to have with Mr Quintas.’

I was surprised! I've known Quinta since I was a child and had never heard of Mr Quintas.

I followed the narrative attentively! Where was I, how have I never known of this incredible gentleman? I realised that what Taiana was telling was a created truth, a literary truth that happens in the imagination.

‘The news about this lovely yard, with its giant, delicious fruits, went from mouth to mouth. And it brought a whole host of curious people who just wanted to get something for themselves. And so, day after day, the whole yard became sad, nothing was the same as before, nothing was so vibrant anymore. And as time went by, Mr Quintas watched his yard die little by little, plant by plant. Until, not knowing what else to do to save his beloved yard, Mr Quintas began to feel so sad, but so sad, that he began to dig a hole in the ground, right in the middle of his yard. He dug a deep hole and put his two feet in it, covered the hole with soil and waited, waited, waited until the rain came. When the rain hit the ground, Mr Quintas's feet began to take root, going deeper and deeper into the earth. His legs became rigid, turning into a hard and very firm trunk. His arms and hair turned towards the sky, grew into branches and leaves that were very tall and eye-catching. Thus, every part of Mr Quintas‘ body was transformed into a large, beautiful tree, except for one part that continued to beat inside Mr Quintas’ chest, marking the rhythm of his new life. He thus became the Grove Man, the guardian tree of this backyard.'

'Miss V., does Mr Quintas exist?’ 

I replied: ‘I think so’. Angélica, aged 08, had already explained to me at the beginning of the year on a visit to the Botanical Garden that we are a bit like trees.

Realising the doubt in the eyes of those listening, Taiana handed out stethoscopes for the children to listen to the hearts of the trees. Doubt ceased to exist: every tree in that yard had a beating heart. The lord of the backyard was there.

The children, more attentive than me, could hear the baby jackfruit's heart. ’We've got to look after the trees, right, Miss V.? Everything's alive.'

Everything is alive. After telling me this, Bia ran off into the arms of her grandmother Lúcia. Until I arrived at the Escragnolle School, Lúcia was the teacher in charge of the unit's reading room. She retired a few weeks after my arrival, but she is present at all the outings as a volunteer. Lúcia is somehow planted, bringing life to the school in other ways. For a long time I wanted to be the wind. However... together with the children, I have longed to be a planted tree.

Photos of the children from the Professor Escragnolle Dória Municipal School

_________________________________________

¹Taiana Simões is an anti-racist educator with a sensitive eye for nature and childhood. Her work integrates different areas of knowledge such as ecoliteracy, science teaching, storytelling, racial literacy and agroecology. 

The story of Mr Quintas, by Henrique Santiago, the creator of Ecobé

THE ONES WHO HAVE THE POWER TO REPRESENT HAVE THE POWER TO DEFINE AND DETERMINE IDENTITY – by Veronica Pinheiro

– I did magic! – said a seven-year-old boy, after he managed to photograph his friend with a professional camera.

He looked at the camera's viewfinder, stopped and almost didn't breathe. I saw his body in absolute silence. I saw silence for the first time. In fact, he did magic. A shaman knows when he's healing, a teacher knows when he's teaching. And a magician knows when he's performing magic. This boy chose how to represent his friend. He carefully chose the angle and the moment. He saw himself in his friend and represented his friend as he would like to be represented. He may not know it, but the ones who have the power to represent are able to determine identity. Even without knowing it, my little companion realised the power of that act.

Most regular schools keep their students in cramped classrooms with closed windows and artificial lighting the whole time. Sitting in uncomfortable chairs, they spend hours without looking their friends in the eye. In silence. The imposed, recurrent and institutional silencing is violent, it subjugates and imprisons the subjects. What are the consequences of spending hours with someone without being able to look them in the eye, without looking outside? We have many criticisms of this model of education, but we can't ignore the fact that, in Brazil, urbanised children and adolescents, especially in the outskirts, are so vulnerable that school can become a space for interesting constructions. So... if school is a place for homogenising and docilising populations, it can also become a place for rupture and insurgency.

So many rights are denied: the right to know that you are nature; the right to play; the right to the city; to have access to the manifestations of the natural world...

In this movement of ours to awaken memories and strengthen territories, we share playing, walking and welcome children into spaces that are special to Selvagem. Until our trip to Quinta da Boa Vista in Rio de Janeiro, the activities were photographed by professionals who are part of the Selvagem Community. Erika Hoch is one of these professionals; generous and loving, she shares her vision of the meetings with us through photographic records. Erika would not be in Rio on the day of the visit to the Quinta. At that moment, Carol Delgado also joined our group. Carol, like Erika, brings happiness in her eyes and gestures. The look in their eyes is very familiar to me, a look of curiosity, a look of hope. When I look into their eyes, I see the children who share this journey with me. Photography, as well as a record, can be a manifestation of the gaze. And the gaze can be constructed. In Eduardo Galeano's ‘The Function of Art’, the boy Diego, overwhelmed by the wonder of seeing the sea for the first time, asks: "Help me look." Erika and Carol teach me how to look.

At Quinta da Boa Vista, Carol chose to let the children tell what their eyes saw. She hands the camera to the little ones. She teaches them how to operate the camera. She suggests agreements and accompanies the process. The next child to take a picture would not be taught by Carol, but by the colleague who preceded them in the activity. I follow Carol's movements and the children's movements. I don't give the volunteers much information about the children beforehand. I just tell them that they are sunny and energetic. The class that experienced this particular outing is a class known at school for its restlessness. The Quinta was the least advisable place for this group, a very wide place with no ‘attractions’. I decided to arrive there two hours before the children to find a special place among the trees. There was a specific organisation among the school's teachers to contain possible fights between the children. 

In the face of the vastness and the many trees, the more restless children entered a state of contemplation and deep self-reflection.

– Have you noticed that I'm not even making a mess today? – said the 7-year-old girl – I haven't hit anyone and I'm not going to. How do you get back here?

It was a day for gazing and constructing gazes. The registering process is a delicate one. The ones who have the power to represent have the power to define and determine identity. The right to look and be looked at is something denied to dissident bodies. When I write about the children of the Pedreira favela, I am representing and constructing a vision of what Pedreira's children are. The colonialist heritage says that some humans can determine the identity of others, and there are those who feel comfortable in this role. 

‘The ones who have the power to represent have the power to define and determine identity. [...] Pedagogy and the curriculum should be able to offer opportunities for children and young people to develop the capacity to criticise and question the systems of dominant forms of representation of identity and difference.’ Tomaz Tadeu da Silva

We have around three hundred photographs taken by the children. I confess I don't have the resources to understand the complexity of the narrative they've constructed about the walks they've photographed. I know very little and feel a lot these days. Most of the photographs are of smiles and hugs. When I was a child, do you know how children from the outskirts of town were represented in photographs? The textbooks I studied only put pictures of black and brown people in vulnerable situations. In science books, for example, there was always a racialised child in the chapters that talked about worms. In history books, black people always appeared in chains or working in socially despicable jobs. Just like a written text, a photograph is a text full of intentionality. There is no neutrality in images, and the children understood this.

They chose how they would like to be represented and seen: smiling, playing and running. Smiling, playing and running are acts of insubordination for children in a context of extreme violence. The records made by the children are unsubmissive to the pain and oppression imposed on the children of Complexo da Pedreira.

They determine how I should look at them. They are life unfolding into life.

The practice of photography in the hands of the little ones
also took place on a trip to Sugarloaf Mountain
on 3 July 2024.

THE SUN SHALL SHINE ONCE AGAIN - by Veronica Pinheiro

“The only safe way to store data long term, like proper long term, is in intergenerational relationships, where data is stored in narratives, intergenerational narratives. That can last for forty, fifty, sixty thousand years. That can last as long as relations are continued—that data will last. It’s the only safe way to store data in the long term”
Tyson Junkaporta¹

One day I heard from the master Nego Bispo: ‘We're not decolonial, we're countercolonial. You don't need the academy to talk about the things your grandmother taught you. It's the things your grandmother taught you that have kept you alive.’ Every day teachers, educators and students ask me about bibliographical references. We were raised to trust what books say. However, before there were books on medicinal plants, herbalists, shamans and praying women shared medicines and therapies with their communities. Intergenerational knowledge continues to flow and confluence. They don't flow back. Academic knowledge flows back: for example, eugenics once had scientific validity. Today, eugenics has no proof or validity for science. When there's no circularity, you have to go back the way you came.

Intergenerational narratives are circular: while something goes, something stays; while something stays, it goes. An education that aims to awaken memories seeks to strengthen children's connections with the territory, strengthening bonds, knowledge and life practices that exist there. In circularity, what once was, what is now and what is to come are sensitively connected. The narrative is the thread that structures this fabric of life. Narratives hold the consciousness of what we are. Generational narratives are not just for awakening socio-historical awareness, they hold pillars that make it possible to read oneself through one's own eyes. 

We tell stories to think about possible worlds. Worlds in which the diverse, the cosmological, the natural and the organic fit. In the Bakongo world, for example, the word Ubuntu, which cannot be translated directly, expresses the awareness of the relationship between the individual, the community and everything that exists. According to Bakongo African philosophy, when a human being (untu) is born, a sun is born. And good living is achieved when all the suns are lit.

In a certain way, stories make it possible for the suns to keep shining. When Kauê Karai Tataendy, a Guarani child, asks me how I organise my workshops and if he can bring the materials to recreate the drawings with Flávio, his friend, in the village, I think that, somehow, we are animating each other once again. Kauê's love for Flávio, plus his desire to share everything he has learnt with his friend, keep each other's suns burning. Kauê moves so that Flávio's sun continues to shine.  

Sharing is the energy that drives us. As long as there are confluences and sharing, the sun shall shine once again.

Once again, let's get animated. We are children of the sacred.

Daily we re-exist under the sun.

¹The interview with Tyson Junkaporta can be accessed here https://emergencemagazine.org/interview/deep-time-diligence/

THE GRANDMOTHER, THE CHILDREN AND THE WATERS – by Veronica Pinheiro

"Waters are like our relatives. In the old days, my grandparents used to say that one should not throw dirty things in the water, because it's the same as throwing dirty things in one's grandmother's or mother's eye", kujá1 Iracema Gah Teh 

Photo: Tania Grillo

A liquid and circular conversation. Confluences between a Kaingang grandmother, the children from Rio and the waters of Guanabara Bay. She, from Rio Grande do Sul. They, from Rio de Janeiro, born near the Acari River. The Bay, an estuary of countless rivers, a partially enclosed body of water formed by the meeting of fresh waters mixed with salt water from the sea. The grandmother, the children and the waters met in the city of Rio de Janeiro, on Sugar Loaf Mountain. In the children's school calendar, the activity is listed as a school trip; however, I call it an Encounter. A movement of connection and an expansion of perspective. Because, if each one sees with the eye they have and can only understand what their feet recognise as the path, when people with different eyes –whose feet recognise other paths– meet, new fabrics of life are established. In the encounter, the diverse connect in such a natural way that an individual can begin to desire other possibilities of relating to life, to the cosmos and to themselves. The encounter is the natural event that upholds life. It's like this in the forest, in the mountain ranges, in the quilombos... in the favelas.

This diary page is a brief and superficial account of a Kaingang grandmother's meeting with the children on top of a hill surrounded by water. On July 3rd 2024, we received the children at school at 7.30am for breakfast. The pink bus was already waiting for us. Every day, more people join together to dream up new ways of life for the Pedreira favela. Even the driver, who also owns the bus, has become a partner in the activities of the Ways of Knowing Group with the school. Mr Jonas said that the journey on July 3rd was on him and he didn't charge us anything that day. From the school, we took a 5th grade2 class, teachers and our dear headmaster Daniele Oziene. The routine of a 40-hour working week plus the bureaucracy and many responsibilities of being a school headmaster in a school in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro make moments like this very special; Dani was with us. Six volunteers from the Selvagem Community³, Rafael Cruz and Dona Iracema, with her Kaingang family, were waiting for us in Urca, at the starting point for the cable car ride.  

The number of adults is planned so that the children don't have to walk in line. It's also so that the teachers can stay out of the role of conductors. In very small groups, without a voice telling them all the time what they need to watch, children and adults can pay attention to everything, to a single point or to nothing at all. I don't understand the Western need to fill in all the gaps all the time. Allowing the eyes to find their way, the ears to find their way, the skin to find its way is allowing memories – dormant due to routines and the plastering of the school process – to awaken. Western education anaesthetises. Life, however, is synaesthetic. To wake up is to reconnect with what keeps us alive. Despite being urbanised, we are nature. Our urbanity is recent, artificial, supplementary and imposed. Every child has the right to know that they are nature. When we understand ourselves as nature, we don't feel alone. Cities are full of people, and yet people feel alone. Being disconnected makes an individual feel lonely in a house full of beings. I say beings because the city and its ways of being, reproduced at school, create models of connection only between equals. In a zoo, animals live only with their equals, as if nature is like that. In a housing estate too, the equals share that space. This is also the case in most schools.

Photo: Carol Delgado

At Morro da Urca we were welcomed by the waters. An immense cloud crossed the massif and hid us. We stayed inside the cloud for a few minutes. Surrounded by water that moistened our skin and hair without getting us wet. We were generously kept in the waters of the rivers from above. The scene reminded me of a prayer house full of smoke. 

Freshwater embrace. For a few minutes I thought we wouldn't be able to see the waters of the bay or the horizon, but that was not a bad thing. The beauty of the water from above was so enchanting that the embrace was worth the journey.

Photo: Carol Delgado

The encounter was with the grandmother, the children and the waters - the waters of the bay and the waters that move within the beings. Grandma Iracema is a kujá (spiritual leader) of the Kaingang people, from the Nonoai Indigenous Land. She knows medicinal herbs and the powers of the forest. She is also the chief of the Gah Reh Multiethnic Retaken Village, located on Santana Hill. On our tour itinerary, there's always time for a conversation. Wise and very attentive to everything, Iracema understands that each one sees with their own eyes and understands from their own perspective. Iracema was wearing a feather headdress, and the children of Pedreira had certainly never seen anyone wearing a headdress before. Iracema, however, started from the commonplace and said: "I am Iracema, a Kaingang grandmother". Done! A grandmother, every child knows what a grandmother is. That information was enough to make us a family, even if only temporarily.

Photo: Carol Delgado

Rafael Cruz, an actor and researcher of childhoods, was the one who started the conversation. He kindly accepted the invitation to the meeting and presented the waters of Guanabara Bay with data and words enchanted with kindness. It was up to me to provoke the group: Anyone here doubts we are nature? I heard reflections full of wisdom from the children. Seeing the doubt in some of their eyes, I asked Chief Iracema: did you ever doubt you were nature? She replied, bringing the waters into the conversation in an unusual way: I never doubted it, because I'm round water. We all stopped to listen with eyes and ears. Even the visitors to the cable car park and the park staff stopped to listen to the waters that were flowing and confluencing in Grandma Iracema. A liquid, circular grandmother. I still find myself thinking about it. 

The Kaingang people consider there to be two types of water in the world: Goj tej (long water, from the rivers) and Goj ror (round water, from the springs, the lakes). These waters are complementary, just as the whole Kaingang cosmology is. The brothers Kame and Kainru are the ones responsible for the origin of the world, according to the Kaingang. They were the ones who created and gave marks to all plants, animals and to the Kaingang people. Everything that exists on Earth has a Kame or Kainru creator half. And each half has different powers and energies that are opposite and complementary.

Kame - ancestral twin that bears the long mark – the Sun and the rivers belong to the Kame half

Kainru – ancestral twin that bears the round mark – the Moon and the springs belong to the Kainru half 

Photo: Carol Delgado

The conversation jumped from advice to healing, history to science, smiles to glances. On the lap of the mountain, our ancestral grandmother, we listened to the grandmother chief talk about love. At the end of her words, we all hugged each other with water, as water, under the Sun. Curricula consider ethnic-racial relations, but here we think in terms of life relations. To keep thinking, here's a transcript of part of what we heard:

"Water is sacred, it is life for us
Through water, we live on as well.
Water is our sustenance, part of us.
Water is part of every living being.
We will never survive without water,
both salt and fresh.
Salt water is also good for skin diseases.
Fresh water is also very good for the body. For any living being.
When I say living being, I also mean our mother Earth, who survives on water.
The tree. Us. All that lives on Earth.
All that lives in the water.
So water is very sacred.
Why didn't we dirty it in the old days?
I say, we don't dirty it, we don't put dirty things in it.
My grandmother and grandfather used to say to me:
"When you put something dirty in the water, either in the eye of the water or in the freshwater, it's the same thing as you putting something dirty in the eye of your grandmother or your mother.
They have marks.
There are waters we call Goj ror, Goj ror.
For us – you might know that, right? – that's when the water springs.
This one is called Goj ror.
Guaíba, for us, is ti ninó goj mag (an arm of great water).
And why do I say ti ninó goj mag (the arm of great water)? Is this arm fresh or salty?
Ti ninó… what's the name?
Guaíba is ti ninó of the sea (the arm of the sea)
It's fresh. Yes, Guaíba is fresh.
So where does Guaíba come from?
From all these goj ror that flow down.
So Guaíba is goj tej.
And there is also goj ror flowing down to Guaíba, for supplementation.
So they have marks, they supplement each other. As we, Kaingang, have our marks, Kamē e Kainhru.
If there were no goj ror, we could not survive.
So they are sacred, part of us, and we are part of them."

Transcript of Gah Teh's speech during a contemporary dance "Round and long water". The same was shared by Iracema during the meeting with the children.

__________ 

¹ kujá – shaman and indigenous leader Iracema Gah Teh

² Our intention is to take all three groups of 5th graders from the school to Sugarloaf Mountain. We have already taken two classes so far.

³ Ana Paula Santos, Carol Delgado, Geórgia Macedo, Tania Grillo and Camille Santos

Thanks to 

Georgia Macedo who made it possible for Iracema to come. Georgia has a master's degree in Social Anthropology from UFRGS and is a dancer. She works in cultural production, in partnership with indigenous artists and as a dance educator in the city of Porto Alegre.

Rafael Cruz, an actor and researcher of childhoods, member of GITAKA, the GITAKA research group: "Childhoods, Ancestral Traditions and Environmental Culture".

Carol Delgado is an anthropologist as a professional and a curious person by nature. Mother, researcher, writer and founder of Puxadinho, a network laboratory of anthropological experimentation for plural futures. 

Iracema Kaingang's family:
Angélica Kaingang, a native of the Votouro Indigenous Land, has a bachelor's and master's degree in Social Work and a PhD in Education from UFRGS
Nyane, 13, has accompanied her mother Angélica Domingos through the cities and indigenous territories since the womb, in the struggles of the indigenous peoples.

IN NATURE, NOTHING LIVES ALONE – by Veronica Pinheiro

Photo: Wagner Clayton

We begin the last text of the semester with the words of teacher Miriam. She works at the Escragnolle Dória School in two shifts, morning and afternoon, looking after 62 children aged five and six, from Monday to Friday.

"Since the arrival of the Selvagem team at our school, we have observed and experienced a new movement within the school. Both because of the access to materials that are not so common in public school classrooms, but also because we have someone to lead us to take a closer look at the richest things around us. In schools in conflict-ridden areas like ours, where children have their ears trained to hear gunshots, getting them to quieten down to listen to the birds, the sound of the wind or what's going on inside them and turn it into art is almost magical. Almost, the line between the magical and the real is so thin that every now and then we invade our colleague's classroom to take photographs as an urge to stop time.

Watching them paint with the paint they produced from the soil found on the school ground, revealing photos of the leaves and branches that fell from the backyard, observing the nature that makes up our territory... Observing, creating, producing. A rich sequence of meanings and I, as a teacher, have the privilege of allowing myself to also be a student at that moment. I sit down like my students, wait for my piece of clay, join them with countless questions, we all try, we do our best, we smile at the results, we end up proud of ourselves for what we've been able to create. We go back to the classroom certain that we are all talented, demystifying the idea that every teacher knows everything. We go back to class with a new outlook on ourselves. I think everyone who has been part of the project has felt this way. We've been led to new conclusions about ourselves, we've seen ourselves as an important part of nature and we've realised how nature impacts us as much as our actions impact nature."

Anna Dantes, Madeleine Deschamps and I had long conversations in December 2023 and January 2024 about ways of learning and the possibilities of developing the workshops and projects carried out in 2023 with the Children's Group. We talked about creating links with schools and teachers. When I suddenly had to return to work in Rio de Janeiro's Municipal Government, we talked about how we could activate the studies and thoughts present in the Selvagem cycles in a classroom. At some point I thought about returning to work as a pedagogical coordinator, but I accepted the challenge of returning as a reading room teacher in a children's school. Children have always been present in my life, but I've never been a teacher regularly looking after the little ones in the classroom.  

I remember being happy to become the "reading room teacher". I remember laughing and remembering my grandmother reading the coffee grounds in the cup, the clouds and the children's eyes. Dorvelina, my mother's mother, couldn't read or write Portuguese, but she read life and interpreted dreams. Reading and interpreting, at home, was an everyday thing, almost never related to books: "We looked at the earth and read it." Everything was text and everything could become text. The books arrived home recently. I thought it was funny being the mediator of reading groups at a children's school. I silently thanked the kindness of life: we were facing the possibility of starting a Learning journey in dialogue with life.

What is shared in the diaries is only part of the work, because our path is walked by many feet. Workshops, outings, organisation of proposals and materials only happen because the Ways of Knowing Group is made up of an invisible network that expands, interconnecting precious care. We arrived at Complexo da Pedreira dreaming of awakening memories and strengthening children's connections with the territory. Beyond the problems that make our days difficult, we mention the ancestral, natural and organic territory. We reminded the children and teachers that we are nature, living and pulsating nature.

Madá was worried about the weekly workload that I would have to fulfil and how this could overload me. We believed, together, and dreamed up budgets, outings, workshops and a "cosmic party" for the end of the year with children dressed as stars and planets. We ended the semester happy. We practised good living in a land that is only known for its evils. The poet said that "Fundamental is love, indeed/It is impossible to be happy alone". Despite all the challenges, everything went happier and more powerfully than we imagined. The school responded much more quickly than we expected. It's been fundamental to keep going with love and together. Ubuntu, I am because we are. Like the trees in the forest, who only exist because they are intimately connected, the Ways of Knowing course is intimately connected to a web of regenerating beings. 

Together with the reports we received from teachers and research groups, this semester we were invited by GERER (the Ethnic-Racial Relations Office of the Municipal Department of Education of Rio de Janeiro) to the 4th GERER Journey – Paths and perspectives for possible futures¹. In response to the invitation, we prepared a Learning Guide from Selvagem, GAS, to be shared with 1544 public primary schools in the city of Rio de Janeiro. "Care is not an exchange, it's a sharing," as Nego Bispo used to say. We didn't create anything. When we arrived at Complexo da Pedreira, there were already many other sharers who welcomed us. From the Cotton Tree at the entrance of the school to the birds that visit us every afternoon, we thank all life and all beings that have been with us this semester.

Àwúré

¹Complementary material for the Journey on Ethnic-Racial Relations. https://sites.google.com/view/gerer-sme/jornadas-da-gerer/iv-jornada-da-gerer

WHERE IS THE FOREST? INSIDE THE CHEST – by Veronica Pinheiro

The school reading room resembles a library in terms of organisation and functionality. Books on shelves, divided by subject; large tables and chairs. A planned space that takes into account storage areas, activity areas and circulation areas. A few general rules are common in reading environments: enter only with the material you need to study; enter in a "disciplined" manner; keep your voice and gestures discreet so as not to disturb other readers.

The first stories I learnt weren't from books kept on shelves. The first narratives and lessons I learnt came from Ms Cassiana's mouth, an elderly woman who used to sit on a wooden bench under a pepper tree, late in the afternoon, on the hill where I was born. To find out the end of a story, we sometimes had to wait until the next day or go after Ms Cassiana while she took care of the plants. She would bless the children and hold them in her lap while she prayed. It was a story-prayer, sung and choreographed with leaves. I remember looking for her one day and not finding her. I never saw her again. Shortly after Ms Cassiana's vanishing, the bench and the pepper tree disappeared. But the words told, sung and prayed are still with me today. 

Today, I'm the old lady who sings verses to children. This week, I went into the reading room and removed all the chairs. I also removed the tables and turned off the lights. And I lit my campfire in the middle of the room. On the floor there were mattresses, 15 copies of the same book and I was sitting there just like old Cassiana used to wait for me. 

I learnt from Carlos Papá that the darkness welcomes everyone, making no difference between people. And it was in the dark of the room that we met grandparents' stories and shared care and kindness. "What is this?" "A camp, don't you see?" I followed their entrance with just my eyes and ears, and said nothing. "Yes, it's a camp. Check out the fire." "Let's sit down because it's dark and cold." It was 8am and it was 31°C outside the room. Inside the room, time and place were moving with no conventions. 

They sat in a circle. The first class I welcomed that day had 28 children present, most of them aged 8, and they were curious to find out what was going to happen. For the first action, they would form pairs of readers. I asked a student who already knew how to read to team up with a classmate who didn't yet know how to read. Once they were in pairs, they had to choose a corner in the reading room to read the story. Each pair cuddled up and hid in any way they could and wanted. They set up little huts and created burrows to read in. I told them that learning is a process in which everyone collaborates in whatever way they can. They took it upon themselves to look after their classmates. I watched as the listeners slowly slid down the mat until they were lying down to listen attentively to the words read by their friend. And unintentionally, at that moment we established another relationship with that floor. Every time we had laid down on the floor of the reading room, it had been to protect ourselves from shooting. For the first time, it wasn't fear that drove us to the ground. It was the earth teaching us to strengthen bonds. The class teacher entered thinking the room was empty and was surprised by the scene and the gestures. Sensitively, she left without being noticed. 

Our second action was to sit round the campfire again. Now the story would be read by me and followed by everyone, each with a copy of the book in their hands. It was a solemnity, the flames of the LED fire warmed our circle. I began like this:

"Sônia Rosa, the book's author, dedicates this book to her two great-nephews: Phelipe de Oliveira Nunes and Vitória Oliveira Silva. I, Veronica, dedicate this reading to my students, who are sitting round the campfire with me." 

Monifa's Treasures is the story of a little girl who, on her birthday, was chosen to keep her family's "treasure". Monifa was the name of the girl's grandmother's great-grandmother. Monifa arrived in Brazil on a slave ship and wrote many diaries full of dreams, prayers and songs. My voice tried to match the solemnity of the moment, but my eyes decided to water the earth themselves. Not just mine, but many eyes watered the earth that day. As we read, we grew closer to each other. The circle soon became a nest. A small, soft hand collected the tears that came from my eyes so as not to wet the book. Other hands supported my shoulders and back. Another pair of hands ran through my tresses.

I don't remember ever crying in front of a class. At the beginning of the year, I was "the auntie who comforted" the children who cried during the adaptation week. In the middle of reading camp, I was looked after by the children who understood that, in the learning process, everyone co-operates as they can. So I started to receive care. I read the story and they read Monifa's notes. 

Around the campfire, sitting on the ground, we hugged each other at the end of the reading. 

Someone said that there was only one thing missing in our camp: "marshmallow". Another added that there were two things missing: "marshmallow" and the forest. Before I could formulate an answer, Enzo, who never seems to be listening to what we're saying, said: "The only thing missing was 'marshmallow', the forest is inside my head."

Monifa means "I'm lucky". Full of forest inside, I was the luckiest person in the world.

Photos: Wagner Clayton

I DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL – by Veronica Pinheiro

"WE NEED TO LEARN TO GET INVOLVED WITH THE EARTH, WITH OUR RIVERS, FORESTS AND MOUNTAINS.
Involvement doesn't mean private interest in owning that river."
Ailton Krenak¹

It rained so much on the afternoon and evening of June 4 in the city of Rio de Janeiro that I lost count of the people who sent messages asking if the visit to Sugarloaf Mountain on June 5 would be cancelled. We got to the second immersion of the Ways of Knowing Journey: the children's encounter with the waters of Guanabara Bay. When the gathering was confirmed, there was no rain forecast for the day of the tour. The forecast changed, but I chose to trust the waters and the Sun. The gathering was not cancelled. I left home under heavy rain. We arrived at the school to find the children under heavy rain. However, I chose to trust the water and the Sun. 

Tania and Ericka, Sun and dream companions, went straight to the visitation site. "Veronica, it's not raining here. Lots of clouds." "Tell Sun we're counting on him, and the children will be out of school soon." After breakfast was served at the school, it was time to board the pink bus and meet our kind driver again. 

An unspoken agreement was made in Favela da Pedreira: If the pink bus is there, the children are going for a walk; therefore they must leave and return to the favela peacefully. The roads leading to the school are cleared so that our bus can pass, and we are watched from the moment we board the bus until we leave the complex. The children don't notice that the community also changes its routine somehow so they can experience joyful days. It was touching to see that the community and the parallel power are concerned about the well-being of children and teachers.

We left the school. It was no longer raining. "Let's go up and see the clouds; in cloudy weather we won't be able to see anything." I listened, but I didn't answer, because I trusted the waters and the Sun. On the way to the Sugarloaf Mountain, we crossed the Acari River. Our beloved river, who cuts through the entire school area. A wide river that listens to us. A river that bears witness to life and the terror imposed on the region. A river that still holds its charms, caymans and capybaras. The Acari River is one of the largest watercourses in Rio de Janeiro, and the reason for our walk². Acari is so strong that macrobiologically it has resisted until recently. We said goodbye to the river and continued our journey. We travelled 40 km to Sugarloaf Mountain. We climbed Urca Hill and Sugarloaf Mountain so we could see the waters of Guanabara Bay from above.

During the experience, the waters and the Sun welcomed us like welcoming loved ones. It wasn't raining and the clouds retreated to another place so that we could contemplate everything that could be seen from the heights. The Sun watched over us as we climbed and descended the hills, and the glow reflected in the waters enchanted the whole group. It was the first time I didn't see fear in the children's eyes. The children hugged each other and walked hand in hand. They smiled wide, long-lasting smiles. There were times when I swore I could see their smiles reflected in the sea. Some cried. Two of them cried a lot and couldn't say exactly why. Unlike the smiles, the cries were short and brief. I'm sure it was just the sea inside their chests that didn't want to be held back. 

We were 10 adults on the tour, and as we arrived there I realised that there would be no mediation. Each adult had four children to accompany. We walked very close together, it was party day. I didn't say much, nature doesn't need a mediator. The waters, the Sun, the Plants, the Birds, the Monkeys, the Wind spoke so much, so much, that I was surprised at how receptive they were. Everything caught the children's attention, the aeroplanes that landed right in front of us, the tourists speaking English, the little signs that one friend read to another who couldn't read. "It says the whale will be here until September" "Really! Is it today? Read it properly and see if there's a day." The whale didn't pass by on 5 June. 

A lot was healed in us that day. Some people are horrified to hear that education can heal. I learnt from the Quilombola and indigenous elders that everything can be healing: songs, words, food, hugs, advice. While we were on our way down, a helicopter landed on the Sugarloaf helipad. 

"Miss V, what does the helicopter want?" 

"It doesn't want anything, my son." 

"Miss V, is it a shooting?" 

"No. It's people out for a ride, they get on the helicopter to go for a ride and see the whole city from above."

The 11-year-old boy only knew about helicopters in the context of urban warfare. The police in Rio de Janeiro have a fleet of helicopters. The armoured aircraft are used in police operations, and the boys know that when there is a helicopter, the situation is worse than usual. They also knew about the news helicopter. But a tour helicopter? Not for travelling. That's because the city separates them. The city has rigid walls to exclude many and guard a few. Capitalism determines the meanings that signs will have within the same city: for my student, helicopter means danger; for tourists, fun. 

“But my observation about cities is that they act as a real energy sink." Ailton Krenak

"Miss V, are we in Europe?"

The question hurt my chest, not because of geographical lack of knowledge. But because this boy understood that he wasn't part of that Rio de Janeiro. But it was a day of celebrations and life encounters. Once again, the life present in nature, the same life that sustains the boy, embraced us. Suspended in the air, inside the cable car, we were just people, air, mountains, water, birds, Sun and water. The same boy cried while hugging the school principal. He told me that he won't forget to take care of nature."Miss V, I didn't know it was so beautiful." "You are nature, just like these mountains and the waters of the bay." 

This trip inaugurated another round of conversations at the school about people's lives and the life of rivers.

Oh, when we got off the cable car, the clouds covered the sky in that place. I asked the rain to wait for us to come home. It listened to us.

When the meaning of life was shifted to having things, we began to distance ourselves from Mother Earth. This marvellous mother who calls our attention, even to say: "Hey, you're alive". When a mother tells us off at home, she's not just telling us off so we don't mess up the house, she's telling us off to say: "You're alive". So that we don't become alienated from the meaning of being alive." (Ailton Krenak) 

Photos: Ericka Hoch

__________________

¹ "We traded our humanity for things." https://revistatrip.uol.com.br/trip-fm/ailton-krenak-trocamos-nossa-humanidade-por-coisas 

² “WHERE'S THE RIVER THAT WAS HERE?” https://selvagemciclo.org.br/diario-de-aprendizagens/#tab-1717677150043-1 

THIS WEEK I DID NOT RECEIVE ANY NOTES – by Veronica Pinheiro

The school is closed. No photos today. I haven't seen the children this week. The school is closed. Access is more difficult than usual. ‘Wear a badge’. ‘Wait before leaving the house’. Don't leave the house! 

We alternate between weeks of enchantment, euphoria, joy and fear. Diffuse danger. Concrete danger. This week I didn't receive any notes or hugs from little arms.

This week reminded me of my first days at the school. At the time, the reading room was still unavailable. In a colourful box, I put the books that I would read with the students in the classroom. I carried books for all the children in the box. Wherever I was with that box, there the reading room was. It was an exercise for me and the children to transform the place. The magic is always in the encounter. Once the reading circle was formed, we could be and do whatever we wanted.

In the first month of school, we read Manu e Mila, by André Alves, together. In a third grade class, I distributed the books to children aged 7 and 8. Whether they are literate in Portuguese or not, they all receive a copy of the book. If there's one thing that children who don't read do easily, it is to imagine. As long as we are not forced to frame what we think, we dream and we feel without grammatical rules, we rely very powerfully on our inner repertoire. The inner repertoire is a whole world that the child brings from home - games, beliefs, knowledge, flavours. Regular schools often ignore the lives that children live and work to make them do what the Common Core Curriculum expects of them.  

When I put books in children's hands, I tell them that even if they don't understand the words, they can read colours, drawings, symbols and lines. They can also pretend to be reading. They can even close their eyes and sleep while I read. Before anyone thinks the permission I give the children is absurd, let me give you some information: some students live in places where there are dances and parties that start at 9pm one day and finish at 8am the next. 

Before I start reading, I tell them everything that can be done. In an environment that specialises in saying what cannot be done, to be able to is a subversion. We read Mila and Manu aloud with sparkles in our eyes, the story of two friends who were looking for ‘JOY’. It was a delicate reading that planted beautiful thoughts in the children and in me. During the reading, I received a warning from the unit managers about a danger and that the children would not be allowed out of the classrooms. Corridors and toilets are our most vulnerable places. I remember finishing the story lying on the floor of the room because the shooting was very close. I remember sharing a care that I didn't know I was capable of sharing. I remember wishing with all my heart that I would never again see children lying on the floor to protect themselves from gunfire.

I also remember spending two hours in absolute silence when I got home; it was silence from the mouth outwards because inside there was a terrifying noise. It had been a long time since I had felt fear. Fear for myself, who had left the danger zone. Fear for the children who would be sleeping there. 

Four months after that episode, we were told to stay home. The school opened only one day that week, but the children didn't show up. I was there with paints, books and an artificial campfire. I bought a little LED fire that simulates real flames. An attempt to warm hearts frozen with fear. But the children weren't there. Sitting by the make-believe campfire, I heard the voice of a teacher who rarely speaks to me. She understood the invitation, we talked all morning, she told me about her classes and her career in schools. We discovered, because of the campfire, that we have many dreams in common. We somehow warmed each other up... I left the favela singing an old samba by Mr Nelson Cavaquinho. The same samba I used to sing when I was young and came home late from university. I used to sing it to scare away the fear of walking alone up the hill where I lived. I used to sing to warm up my heart and scare away fear, just like my grandfather taught me. On the last day of open school, I sang to get out of school.

"When I step on dry leaves

Fallen from a mango tree

I think of my school

And of the poets of my dear first station

I don't know how many times

I went up the hill while singing

The sun is always burning

And that's how I come to an end

When time tells me

I can't sing anymore

I know I'll miss it

Alongside my guitar

And my youth"

While I was writing this I received a message saying that we can return. May the days ahead be good.

Awrê

READING THE EARTH - by Veronica Pinheiro

I remember the conversation we had with clay at the Cosmovisions of the Forest conference on 13 May 2023 at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio). The gathering intertwined the Ore ypy rã - Tempo de Origem and Selvagem projects in a day of exhibitions and activities with songs, dances and conversations. In front of a Marajoara ceramic vase, Francy Baniwa began to talk about how Baniwa women talk to clay, who is a very ancient and sacred being. Clay is also sacred where I come from. I remember the red clay that covered the whole community and how we used to touch our hands to the ground and to our hearts before dancing or playing capoeira. At home, clay was our grandma; our original cradle and ultimate lap. Clay was only harvested when needed. I took this to the clay workshops.

Walking through the Costa Barros neighbourhood, where the school is located, between gullies and shacks, the cracking of the ground caused by rain, landslides or the action of man reveals the colours that lie in the earth. Textures and shades of brown and reddish hues colour and reveal the soil's physical, chemical and mineralogical properties. While planning the workshops on planting fruit species at Nhe'ëry with Gerrie Schrik, I was asked the following question: What is the soil like at the school? Not having the technical answers, I was able to talk in detail about what I saw. And I could see the colours of the earth in the excavations and gullies. Looking at the soil is a practice I try to pass on to the children.

"Nobody analysed the soil, we knew the soil just by looking at it. Just by looking at the soil we knew what to plant. We knew the vegetation. On a soil that produces a lot of native legumes, we planted beans; on a soil that produces a lot of native grasses, we planted maize and rice. It's a cosmic language. It's simple. You don't need to analyse the soil, because soil already tells you what it is willing to offer." Nego Bispo

The soil speaks. We spent a week at school looking at the ground. Children and I. Tracks of dirt around the school that hadn't been covered by cement were the texts of the week. In class, the children and I read and talked about the ‘Earth Letter’. Interestingly, the children don't even know what a letter is anymore. They write little notes to me on pieces of paper, but they call the note a message. I explained what a letter was, what it was for and how it was composed. ‘Can the Earth write a letter?’, ‘No! It doesn't have arms or hands. She must have dictated it and someone wrote it down: like God with Moses". 

After a lot of chatting, we went out into the yard. It looked like an expedition: notebooks, pens, a branch to support us on the way up. The book was outside the reading room. We read the oldest book of all: we read the earth. For a while, we only observed the colours of the soil; in other moments, only the little insects and animals that lived there without anyone noticing. ‘Auntie, a lot of people live here!’, ‘I know, did you think the school only had furniture and books? The school is inhabited by living beings even when we're not there." Ants, lizards, spiders, plants, lots of birds. The first graders were amazed. They didn't know that so many different birds used to visit that yard in the late afternoon. We sat in silence in the middle of the court after the story had been told. I told them that they would be receiving visitors. Winged, colourful, singing visitors. I had the feeling they were the same birds that usually wake me up at home. They're certainly not the same birds, but it's nice to think that they accompany me to Pedreira. 

I tried to talk to the old gentleman who is always planting on a piece of land at the top of the hill. He's certainly the best person to talk to about the planting and earth pigment workshops. He has a daily relationship with the soil: I see it when I walk past his yard at 7am. In a region with the second lowest human development index, there is a man who is full of green. Man-plant-soil suspended and hidden in the green on the edge of the asphalt. While food insecurity circulates daily among the local population, this man, who has not disconnected from the land, cares for and is cared for. We've arranged to visit him, we intend to arrive with a basket of delicacies, and in some way be kind to those who gently tread on the earth.

We also intend to bring him a picture painted with pigments prepared using soil from the territory and the school, and somehow establish a dialogue based on our common cradle: our relationship with the land. The workshops are initial movements, they are seeds. By germinating the seeds, some memories of life are awakened. The awakened life is in the territory, in the memories stored in the earth and dormant in the bodies. By establishing a partnership with a regular school, we dreamed up the idea of living schools in urban and peripheral environments. Our proposal is to strengthen the territory, the knowledge and life practices that exist there. In this movement, we try to identify who are the guardians of good living; who are the beings who, in the midst of so many imposed difficulties, maintain practices that sustain ancestral cosmologies.

There is no single model of workshop that can be applied to every school and territory. We have shared natural paint workshops in other moments. For the children at the Escragnolle school, we started with the ‘Earth Letter’ and worked our way up to pigments and paints. When I invited them to learn more about the place where they live, I repeatedly heard stories of violence and fear. I asked them if they knew where the paints in the workshop came from. Some children suspected that the paint was clay. ‘It looks like paint, but it smells like earth’. I asked them if they knew that the soil in the area around the school was a soil full of colours. I asked them if they knew the kind man who managed to have a different way of being and living in the favela. Children, like birds, know a lot. The little ones gave me his name and a possible time for visiting him. 

The children said they hadn't realised how important it was to know about soil, plants and the backyard. During the week the children gave me gifts of soil, annatto and pigmented flowers. Gifts from the children of Pedreira. Perhaps the most beautiful I've ever received.

Now we're mapping the favela's green paths. The colours of the earth in the school yard paint in yellow and in shades of red the maps of life in Pedreira.

Photos: Wagner Clayton

APPROPRIATIONS AND REREADINGS will be allowed – by Veronica Pinheiro

“‘I don't have any prospects regarding a new world. I don't believe in a new world. I believe that we will have to decide what we are going to do with the one we are ruining. The idea of a new world is part of a logic that suggests that when my shoe is finished, I buy a new one.’"
Ailton Krenak

The year: 2024. The two reflections came to me on the same day: the first, a video, from which I transcribed an excerpt of Ailton Krenak's interview; the second, an open call announced by the Municipal Multilanguage Exhibition, from which I copied the phrase that gives this text a title. 

This week's diary would be about the workshop ‘Colours and earth - pigments and painting’. However, on the last day of the week, while I was still working, I received the open call for submissions to the 4th Municipal Multilanguage Exhibition. My task was to understand how we could register our school and the work we are developing for the exhibition. I don't know if you do it, but when I read calls I pay attention to the small details. There were so many pedagogical guidelines added to a bunch of acronyms and general and specific objectives... I'll admit here that I'm wary about laws, guidelines and pedagogies. I'm more interested in the practices, the unsaid, the established things, the choices and the breath of the proposals. At first, I read it to understand which artistic-pedagogical language we could enrol in (dance, theatre, music and/or visual arts). Then I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd read.

The theme of the exhibition – Brazil and its Brazils, the influence of originary peoples in the formation of our Brazilian cultural identity, in the light of Law 11.645¹ – has a series of agendas to fulfil. There were so many beautiful demands (competences for the 21st century²; conjugating the 4Cs³; working on transversal themes⁴; including the socio-environmental issue and the Sustainable Development Goals – ODS⁵; broadening the perception of society and of the world; focussing on the 2030 Agenda with the Diversity Coordination⁶; not forgetting the Common Curriculum Base – BNCC⁷; implementing Law 11.645) that I got dizzy. 

This text could have ended with the title. However, I invite everyone to think about how we are going to repair this world that we are ruining. ‘Appropriations and/or rereadings will be permitted’. This sentence jumped out at me and I automatically said: ‘I don't understand’. Or I understood everything. The sentence (or phrase; I am intentionally choosing the word SENTENCE) written on page 15 of the call says so much about the ethnic-racial relations proposed by the institutions and about their pedagogical choices. But institutions are made up of and represented by people. And as people, together we can think of possibilities for rewriting perspectives and realities.

There is no neutrality in a text. I learnt, studying linguistics, that ‘a monster sleeps' in every sign. If I pay attention to the unsaid, how can I ignore the said? The written? 

‘The body of a black or indigenous person is impregnated with culture and memory, it carries the marks of pain and suffering that colonisation has inflicted. These skins are not costumes. Therefore, cultural appropriation is not homage, it is symbolic violence exercised subtly or explicitly. Nobody has the right to wear a headdress and paint their face while supporting indigenous genocide. A white man can't sing samba and keep spouting racism.’⁸

Someone will surely try to explain and provide context to justify the sentence that hurt my eyes so much. They may explain, but I'm not the one who values documents and papers. My people keep memories and knowledge in chants, in practices and in prayers. I'm not the one who demands that treaties and agreements be validated in writing and protocolled. It's the institutions. It is the institutions that say ‘what is written goes’. And it was written:

‘Appropriations will be allowed’

And if it's written, it can be rewritten. May we, from 2024 onwards, collectively rewrite the paths and possibilities of coexistence. Every culture is the result of years of social and natural interactions; therefore, the affirmation of identity is an organic movement. It's important to listen more; for example, to listen to how indigenous people would like to be presented and represented. Many people don't realise that a graphic is not just a painting; many others don't know that a chant can bring back ancient memories and words of healing. In 2024, may we understand that the best way to honour a tradition is by strengthening territories and respecting all the manifestations of life that are present in them.

¹http://portal.mec.gov.br/index.php?id=12990&option=com_content&view=article#:~:text=A%20Lei%20n%C2%BA%2011.645%2F08,Afro%2DBrasileira%20e%20Ind%C3%ADgena%E2%80%9D.

²https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000234311

³The 4C's concept was presented by the National Education Association (NEA) as a complement to the activities of ‘21st Century Skills’, a 21st century education movement that aims to capacitate educators to advance in their own practice. The 4Cs are: critical thinking; collaboration; communication; creativity.

⁴ The transversal themes defined by the Brazilian National Curriculum Parameters are: Ethics, Cultural Plurality, Environment, Health, Sexual Orientation, Local Issues. http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br/images/implementacao/contextualizacao_temas_contemporaneos.pdf

⁵ There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (ODS) defined by the United Nations. http://portal.mec.gov.br/component/tags/tag/objetivos-de-desenvolvimento-sustentavel

⁶ https://www.gov.br/mec/pt-br/assuntos/noticias/2023/setembro/instituida-comissao-nacional-para-os-objetivos-de-desenvolvimento-sustentavel

⁷ http://basenacionalcomum.mec.gov.br/

⁸Rodney WILLIAM, Apropriação cultural. São Paulo, Pólen, 2019.

SUMAHUMANS – by Veronica Pinheiro

“Yuxin dacixunuan punyan daci we tsaua”, 

"All the yuxin sat on all the branches of the sumauma tree".

At 7.30am on May 7, 2024, the principal opened the school gate as she did every day. Instead of 'good morning', we heard: ‘I couldn't sleep with so much joy! I wanted it to be morning so I could come to school.'

Once the sentences were pronounced, we heard a sequence of voices, as in a chorus: ‘Me too’. ‘Me too'. ‘Me too’.

I didn't reinforce the chorus, but I couldn't either.

It was the day of the first immersion of the Ways of Knowing Group. Our destination: Rio de Janeiro's Botanical Garden. In this movement of awakening memories, we provide encounters. Some are between species, others are not. For our immersion, we thought about children meeting trees. We had a script lined up: receive the children at school; breakfast; board the bus; arrive at the Botanical Garden; visit the museum and the Mbaé Kaá exhibition; walk in the garden; picnic; meditation and theatre games; return to school; and lunch. A long, sensitive line marked out our expectations in green.

If ‘there is only experiencing and the rest doesn't concern us’¹, what happens when we sensitively bring the urban beings we are closer to nature, which we also are? We will probably reach the last diary of the year, in December, without an answer, but this question moves us. Over and over we talk about sowing; about germinating words. In an ideal scenario, those who plant a field know what they're going to harvest and when they're going to harvest it. What about those who plant dreams? Gatherings? Who plants water, trees and forests? 

Taking children to the Botanical Gardens so they can find the trees is not a pedagogical strategy. It's much simpler: every child has the right to know what nature is and to have access to the manifestations of the natural world. 

‘Miss V, that's not a shot. It's fireworks. Relax.’ ‘Miss V, that noise is from the news helicopter, the police helicopter has another sound.' In the Pedreira favela, many children under the age of 10 can recognise the sounds of horror and war. But they don't know the sounds of the wind meeting the treetops. On May 7, 2024, the day of the tour, the favela dawned quiet and the sun came out early and warm, even though it was autumn. The last Tuesday tasted like a party candy.

We were 42 people in total from the school². 6 from the Ways of Knowing Group³. 1 bright pink bus and 1 very kind driver. The colour of the bus is strategic, we need to get in and out of the favela safely. The pink bus has become a beloved character among children and adults, it has already earned a name and its visit is being awaited by other classes in the school.

The visit to the garden began and ended in front of the Sumauma tree (Ceiba pentandra). At the beginning, the work ‘Sumauma: Crown, House, Cosmos’, by Estevão Ciavatta with narration by Regina Casé, virtually immersed us in the Sumauma. We were greeted by the Museum's education team; Daiani Araújo and Thalyta Sousa tenderly welcomed the children and led the whole group to Sumauma. Everyone In the projection room, without exception, listened with their hearts to the words of the tree. For the first time, many of them realised that a tree has a lot to say about itself and about life. Some hardly blinked, others listened with their eyes closed. All of them smiled with lips and eyes.

‘Miss V, draw us the map of how to get from school to here. I want to bring my family here to listen to the tree.’

‘I'll make a map from the Pavuna metro station to here. It'll be very easy to get here.’

We climbed the wooden stairs in small groups of 7 people. Around the Viva Viva Garden installation, on the second floor and inside the Mbaé Kaá exhibition, we had a few more conversations about plants and the relationship between indigenous peoples and them. Guarani art, nature, science, Barbosa Rodrigues and the windows of the building. After talking about the exhibition, the children ran to the window. There I realised that the windows of the school classrooms have no view. The collective gesture of looking out brought a sense of disquiet to the group. Many encounters were about to happen. Hugs between the children and museum educators wrapped up the first part of the tour.

In the Garden, the children looked in every possible direction. They saw with their eyes, ears, feet, skin and hearts. They paused to admire the fresh water flowing down from the rocks. Pause to feel the freshness of the water. For a minute or more I didn't hear any voices; hearts and mouths fell silent so that the eye could see properly. After the silence that greeted the waters, euphoria gradually overtook the group again. ‘I'm not going to wash this hand any more. I touched the water from the waterfall with it.’ I didn't say anything. The boy believed he had touched the water, little did he know that the water had touched him. Now he carries fresh water within, whether he washes his hand or not is a detail.

‘Miss V, the bamboo just spoke!' Before I could comment...

‘Why are there no pandas up there?

Before I could say anything... a giant fish, the Black Pacu that lives in the Frei Leandro Lake became more interesting than the answer. We walked for a few minutes, crossed the small bridge and went through the gate to the children's playground. There we had a snack and meditation break. We sang to the Earth. With our eyes closed, we were trees. Roots. Trunk. Branches. Leaves. Our tour was coming to an end, it was time to return to the bus. We took a different route inside the garden, as we couldn't leave without finding the Sumauma tree planted in the Garden. 

With very deep roots that bring water to the surface even in the dry season, the Sumaúma is considered the mother of the forest and can reach 70 metres, which is equivalent to a 24-storey building. Where I come from, the kapok tree is home to Iroko (from the Yoruba Íròkò), who is the guardian of ancestry and the ancestors, the centre of nature and the dwelling place of all the Orishas; the first tree to be planted on Earth. Many indigenous peoples claim that the large sapopemas of the kapok tree represent a portal to another world. A sacred tree for many forest peoples, a great mother who protects everyone. The Huni Kuï say ‘Yuxin dacixunuan punyan daci we tsaua’, ‘all the yuxin sat on all the branches of the samaúma’. In a pluriversal space of dialogues, the kapok tree is all this and more.

I read an EMBRAPA document on the Sumauma tree and thought that the team who wrote the text for the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply should have visited Rio's Botanical Garden together with the children, because the government technicians were only able to present multiple uses and economic alternatives of the tree. However, just like the babas and shamans, the children connected with the tree. Dreams and sap mixed together. As our circle formed around the buttress roots, green memories were awakened. In the time of dreams, my little companions dreamt of being a tree and living in a garden. Dreams are sap, a liquid that circulates and keeps circular time. In the time of saps, 10-year-old Angélica came to the following conclusion: ‘We found the tree, we went inside it and now we are SUMAHUMANS’.

Returning to the question that moves us: what happens when we sensitively bring the urban beings we are closer to the nature we also are? According to Angélica, we can become a bit of a tree.

¹in Mbaé Kaá o que tem na mata: A Botânica Nomenclatura Indígena, by João Barbosa Rodrigues. Dantes Publishing House, 2018.

² 37 4th grade students, 3 teachers, the pedagogical coordinator and the assistant principal.

³ Luany mediating the visit to the Garden; Paula Novaes mediating the breathing activity and theatre games; Tania Grillo mediating the Mbaé Kaá exhibition, and 3 members of the volunteer team: Bia Jabor, Eliane Brígida and Evellyn.

Photography: Éricka Hoch; 

Coordination: Veronica Pinheiro .

FROM SUN TO SUN – by Veronica Pinheiro

Photo: Wagner Clayton                      

Every MUNTU (human being) is the living Sun, perceived as a "power", "a phenomenon of perpetual veneration, from conception to death" and beyond. Once brought into the physical world, a sacred task begins (the most important for African civilisations): to take care of this MUNTU so that it shines like the midday sun.¹

Note: the African cosmology of the Bantu-Kongo, presented by Dr Fu-Kiau, presents caring for children as an art that needs to be honoured.

Thinking of the school world, being a children's teacher is an activity considered less prestigious in Brazilian society; an activity generally carried out by women and by people with low purchasing power. There is an established hierarchy among education professionals and those who teach in Early Childhood Education and Primary Education are disrespected within their own category. It's common for a university professor to take offence when asked which school he works in. "School? I don't work in a school. I'm a professor at so-and-so university."

Curiously, many teachers who publicly present themselves as decolonial (or counter-colonial) are attached to hierarchical European thinking, which sees early childhood and primary education as a place of less intellectual prestige. 

Professor Jacqueline Siano was present at my master's qualifying exam and she remarked: "You're researching Afro-Pindoramic confluences and counter-colonial practices in education. You need to go back to school!" 

I'm back. 

I come back pregnant with paths and possibilities. I carry in my heart some ideas to postpone the end of the world. Some say I'm coming back pluriversalised. I say I'm coming back populated. Populated by beings, narratives, times and spaces. I've been walking with more and more companions. On this return, many memories have been awakened in the body of flesh and in the body of memory. Among these memories, I have met and awakened solar memories.

Who is the Sun? How many stories do we know about its origin, the origin of the world and its role as a vital source of energy?

I carried two solar memories: the one from home, repeated in verse and daily practice, told me that we were like the Sun; the one from school said that the Sun is a star located in the Milky Way, the closest star to planet Earth and the largest in the entire Solar System. The school said that it was impossible for me to be a Sun. Since the school is authorised to say what is right and wrong, I forgot that I was a Sun and stuck with the school's version. This reductionist view of existence erases suns in broad daylight. 

Kuaray (Guarani); Abe (Desana); Mãyõn (Maxakali); Kamoi (Baniwa); Sol (Portuguese); Bari (Huni Kuin); Pawa (Ashaninka); Wei (Macuxi) are more than words used to designate the Sun; they are solar epistemologies. Generative words, accompanied by life and worlds. I have a special liking for narratives that begin with "There was no world before". This time before time existed brings profound teachings about caring for and maintaining existence. Origin myths don't exist to feed the ears of the world, but to vibrate life. 

Awakening solar memories, some voids were filled with listening and research; soon the Ciclo Sol [Sun Cycle] will present a series of talks about the Sun². Thoughts from home have reappeared in books and theses. 'Deixa meu Sol aceso' [Let my sun light up], my father's talk, shows traces of an ancient philosophy, brought to Brazil by black people during the Atlantic crossing between the 16th and 19th centuries (human trafficking promoted by Portugal is the most accurate term). In Bantu-Kongo thinking, four great "suns" govern the processes of formation and change. The first (Musoni Sun) is the Sun of "going to", of all beginnings; the second (Kala Sun) is the Sun of all births; the third (Tukula Sun) is the Sun of maturity, leadership and creativity; the fourth (Luvèmba Sun) is the Sun of the last and greatest change of all, death¹. 

I've never used the word "sun" in the plural as much as I have in recent days. Plural in meanings and existences. Coexistences that are continually forming, changing and expanding. From sun to sun, if we think of the Bantu-Kongo formation solar process, the Ways of Knowing Group is on the second sun. We are being born. Being born and proposing births. To this end, we hold weekly planning and study meetings (with people from the Selvagem team); we meet monthly with the teachers from the partner school and with the group's volunteers. 

Photo: Wagner Clayton

Our last breakthrough was to receive a visit from ceramicist Angélica Arechavala (a volunteer who accompanied the Children's Group and now supports the Learning Group). It may sound simple, but the school is located in an unfavourable area for visitors. Our idea is to strengthen partnerships and create an organic network between territories, which includes bringing people from outside to meet the school community and taking the school community to visit other places. 

In order for another living Sun to be included in the mediation of the ceramics workshops, we had the support of the school, which made people available to pick Angélica up and bring her by using the safest route. When I shared with a scientist the power of that 10-hour meeting, I got the following comment:

"Objects fold space-time, they feel this curve and move accordingly. You are a sun. The arrival of the ceramist brings a new sun in addition to you. It shifts the position of the first sun, and especially of the other little planets who are your pupils, hahaha, who were used to the previous configuration. That's why they were closer together, revolving and orbiting around you."

What was so powerful about this meeting? I was able to sit down and touch children who don't usually allow me to get too close. Children who know horror very closely trusted us at the last meeting. It was an environment of great trust and care: the principal, coordinators and teachers accompanied us at all times, in every space. Angélica's presence folded space-time, generating solar displacements. We are on the way to creating Tukula, the Sun of maturity. May Tukula arrive at a good time.

"The Sun walks slowly. Nevertheless, the Sun crosses the world" – African proverb

¹Fu-Kiau, Kia Bunseki and A. M. Lukondo-Wamba. KINDEZI: The Kongo Art of Babysitting. Black Classic Press, 2000.

²The Cycle is made up of 19 pluriversal speeches by Catarina Delfina Tupi-Guarani, Fabio Scarano, Moisés Piyãko (Ashaninka), Catarina Aydar, Carlos Papá (Guarani), Aliny Pires, Dua Busë (Huni Kuin), José Miguel Wisnik, Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Júlia de Carvalho Hansen, Francisco Baniwa, Aza Njeri, Anacleto Tukano, Carla Wisu (Dessano), Camila Mota, Marcelo Gleiser, Eduardo Góes Neves and Ailton Krenak.

THE SUN DREAMT OF DAWNING – by Veronica Pinheiro

There are thousands and thousands in the middle of the dark
[A God] created the Sun
There are thousands and thousands in the middle of the dark
Created the water, the wind, the life on the planet
That’s why you can not be afraid of darkness.
Darkness is the mother of the whole universe, including God.
Darkness does not choose anyone.”
Guarani poetics narrated by Carlos Papá.1

Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

The following dialogue opens the way to the second Ways of Knowing Workshop, tought by Selvagem for the House of the Children:

• I need a dark classroom.
• We don't have a dark classroom. Can't you use the Reading Room with the lights off? 
• Yes I can. But it is not dark enough. And, if by chance someone turns on the room's light, we will lose this stage of the work.
• Kids are afraid of the dark.
• Kids are afraid of the relationship with the dark that has been created for them. It will work, they will be carrying the Sun inside their chest. We will build a good relationship with darkness.
• There is the former doctor's office. I don't know if it is dark enough, but I'll take you there.

The doctor's office was covered in layers of black fabric, kindly installed by teacher Wagner, making it our laboratory for images and sounds. The workshop was about the Sun and the relationship of life it establishes with the Earth. The word "relationship" will appear written or implied in all the diary entries, and it won't be by carelessness. The workshop, more specifically, was on cyanotype, a handmade photographic process created in the 19th century that uses iron salts to produce blue photographic prints. The room provided was initially for preparing the chemicals, sensitising and drying the paper in the first stage. And the sunlight was needed to print the images. The room then becomes a place to think about the things we feel when we are away from the light. For the children, light means good, a good thing; and darkness means bad, a bad thing. Between light and darkness, Euro-Christian-monotheistic thinking has created fixed distances filled with fears.

The choice of workshops is a great collection of concerns. We look for activities in which nature is the protagonist. And we make sure that protagonism is not confused with utility or resource. We make sure that nobody thinks we use sunlight to develop photographs. We don't use nature, we are sharing beings. In front of the sun, bodies dance - the bodies of water, humans, plants and salts. What is the point of activities where there is a synaesthetic boiling, which in the end only brings pleasure to humans and offends trees, water and the earth? 

Photo: Wagner Clayton

Before the handmade photography workshop, we talked about the texts that sunlight writes on the earth. We talked about darkness (where we all come from), photosynthesis, photos and synthesis. Three texts were shared with the schoolchildren: The Life of the Sun on Earth¹, Iori discovers the Sun and Taynôh, Ho Shamêh Tahe. A video about the sun was shown. We painted the Sun on cotton fabrics; we wove solar rays into bracelets; we made photographic records; we sensitised paper in the dark laboratory. To what end? To awaken solar memories.

School builds forgetfulness. For years, I woke up before the sun, arrived at school very early and returned home just as the sun was setting. I worked at school and taught about the things of life. At that time, I was so far away from the sun that my body forgot a lot. I hadn't learnt how to sweat or produce vitamin D. My body lacked sun.

If school builds forgetfulness, we tell stories to awaken the senses and the memories. 

"If you struggle to find the way, ask my son Kuaray, the little Sun, and he will know how to guide you."1

In dialogue with the Guarani myth, we learned a little about Kuaray, son of Nhanderu'i. We talked about walking and listening. 

The mother of the Sun stopped listening to the Sun at some point because she became furious when she was stung on the finger by a huge bumblebee.

Photo: Wagner Clayton

The little suns in front of me wanted to speak. I paused to listen to them. Those were silenced narratives. At that moment, I understood a little about their relationship with me and with the school. Some children without a mother, many without a father, having to be a Sun shining alone on Earth. Children aged between 5 and 7 talking about the guardianship council, abandonment and their desire to be a Sun.

When reading Iori discovers the sun, by Oswaldo Faustino, it's actually the Sun that discovers Iori. In Yoruba, Iori means "head that flies high". We exercised imagining who the Sun was and what he was doing on Earth. At the end of this activity, I received several suns painted and labelled with female names. I smiled and said out loud: "Did you learn this from the Macuxi?". "Wei" means "Sun". Sony Ferseck told me that in the culture of the Macuxi people, the sun is a feminine entity². The children understood the exercise of thinking about other ways of being in the world. They thought of the Sun as the one who feeds the plants every morning and said: "The Sun is a mother". I smiled. I'd never thought of that possibility. We converged. My little companions on the journey once again illuminated my path in Pedreira [Quarry]³.

From this book comes the sweetest sentence I've read all week: "The sun dreamed of dawning". 

I dreamt of the sun and we headed to the last reading and workshop.

Taynôh, Ho Shamên Tahe, the boy who was a hundred years old, is a multilingual book (Puri, Guarani Mbya, Portuguese and Spanish) by Aline Rochedo Pachamama (Churiah Puri). The reading was quick and generous. We were guided by fresh, deep water and talked about not planting forgetfulness.

During this meeting, we systematised all the stages of cyanotyping. After explaining everything that was going to happen and the results we were going to get, I skipped stages and broke agreements. The class followed the teacher in the dark room, and later in the Sun. But the impressions didn't come out on paper. Letícia, aged 10, remarked: "For things to happen on earth, all the elements need to be present. You sensitised the papers with water. You didn't use salts. 'Everything happens in presence', right?". "Yes. Everything needs to be present, Leticia."

Vitor, aged 10, concludes: "So let's go back to the dark and start all over again";

We started again. And when we put the papers in the sun, without skipping steps or absences, the sun wrote in blue on the papers. There were our blue photographs, depicting the leaves we had picked in the backyard.

Photos: Wagner Clayton

¹https://selvagemciclo.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/CADERNO79_PAPA_KANGUA.pdf

²Ferseck, Sony. Weiyamî: mulheres que fazem Sol. Boa Vista, RR: Wei Editora, 2022.

³Pedreira [Quarry] is the name of the complex of favelas where the school is located.

WHERE'S THE RIVER THAT WAS HERE? – by Veronica Pinheiro

1st grade class, Circle of Reading: The nature that lives here
Photo: Teacher Wagner Clayton

Brazilian history textbooks have always presented the lives of indigenous and quilombola peoples in a prejudiced way. The gaps intentionally established in basic and higher education have formed and deformed generations, making them conform. The systematic erasure of knowledge produced by counter-hegemonic groups¹ is called EPISTEMICIDE. When scientific knowledge becomes the only way to read and understand life, a monocultural structure is established, and it attempts to disqualify other forms of knowledge. 

Last month, at an event at a federal university, I heard that "we are mongrels". The speech came from a well-intentioned PhD student who was trying to explain that mestizaje structures Brazilians' whole way of being and existing. Mongrels are dogs with no defined breed, with no delimited origin and mixed from two or more breeds. Despite all the love I have for mongrels, the thinking that compares the Brazilian people to dogs without a defined origin is perverse from start to finish.  

I start telling Indigenous and Afro-Pindoramic stories as follows: 

Five hundred years ago, there was no such people as Brazilians. The ones who lived here (in Rio de Janeiro) were from other peoples. They were nations that spoke different languages, they had their own way of being and their own name. And they always ask: Who used to live here? 

The colonial trap is so well set that we only give children the information contained in books. We do this even though we know that the colonisers, who tried to identify the name of each people, caused a lot of confusion because they didn't know the language spoken or simply preferred to refer to nations generically.

The school where we are weaving memories is located near the rivers Acari (fish), Irajá (gourd of honey) and Pavuna (swampy place). The rivers give their names to the neighbourhoods. And on their banks, as well as the riparian forest, we find threads of memory for our weavings. 

In the AYVU PARÁ in-person study cycle, which took place on 31 May 2023 at the Museum of Indigenous Cultures in São Paulo, Carlos Papá mediated classes with profound knowledge about the Nhe'ërÿ (the place where the spirits bathe, as the Guarani call the Atlantic Forest). During the days of the meeting, on the way to the restaurant where we had lunch, Papá asked me the following question: "What are you listening to?" 

It was lunchtime on a weekday in Barra Funda, São Paulo. I could hear children going to and from school, cars and buses on Matarazzo Avenue, people passing by. Papá, noticing that I didn't understand his question, stopped, looked at a manhole cover and said: "Can't you hear the river? There's a trapped river inside here."

After being gently guided to listen, I heard the river. Its voice was different from the rivers I had just heard when travelling through Recôncavo Baiano. A dense voice. It was so strong and alive that I stayed there for a few minutes. 

Rivers know many things. They certainly know the origin of many things. Nothing in this territory has an unknown origin. The question is: who are we listening to? Textbooks provide information about indigenous people and quilombolas, but indigenous and quilombolas are rarely involved in organising the contents. It's even rarer to find partnerships that don't treat indigenous and quilombola people as informant objects or informant interlocutors.

I dream of the day when, as a teacher, I'll be in a position to put the following in the references of my texts and lesson plans: "words from the Acari River" or "chanting of the hummingbird who landed on the window of the room".

Law 11.645 makes the study of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian history and culture compulsory in primary and secondary schools. In practice, books are the reference, and classes are meetings to go over numbers, data, dates and information about something unknown. Indigenous and Afro-diasporic history and culture are established in presence, not in reference. The myth or the itan are living memories of living peoples. Corporeality is the place of articulations and agencies of life. The territory vibrates the force of life; it is at once the body, the ground, the river, the air and all the beings that exist in that place. This is why we insist on talking about living schools. Schools of presence, with living memories.

To this end, we need to redraw the pathways. As a teacher, I must be open to processes of unlearning. De-education. I need to create another relationship with time/term/schedule/agenda. What the Acari River says matters more to me than what the books say. When children ask me: "Which people used to live here?"

I reply: "Where's the river that was here? Does any river pass through here? Because the rivers certainly know more about this place than the books I've read."

The question was fruitful: we now have a project together with the unit's pedagogical coordinator for the school and for the school community. Where is the river that was here? What do rivers say about us?

If you listen to rivers and know about liquid things, more or less torrential, we need you to build routes. We have a canoe called Enchanted to walk the waters. And there's always room for one more. Will you accept our invitation?

Reading room and 4th grade presentation to the school: It's not the rain's fault
Photos: Teacher Wagner Clayton 

¹ Counter-hegemonic movements are understood as practices of resistance to dominant management discourses which seek to contest and escape the discipline of the capitalist system's order. SULLIVAN, S; SPICER, A; BÖHM, S. Becoming global (un)civil society: Counter-Hegemonic Struggle and the Indymedia Network. Globalizations, 8(5), 703–717. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2011.617571

SPEECH DRAWINGS - by Veronica Pinheiro

"Is anyone listening to me?
Who's listening to me clap once.
Who's listening to me clap twice.
Who's listening to me clap three times!"

Teachers all over Brazil use this quatrain to get children's attention for an activity. As a teacher, many times all I needed was students making their ears, eyes and hands available to me. There is a certain ruler that measures the efficiency of a teacher, and in schools we know it by the name of "class dominance or control". The quieter the class, the more efficient the conductor. A teacher at work is called a conductor. The behaviour of the class and their performance in examinations are the maximum criteria for evaluating a teacher. Why? Because these points are observed quantitatively; they are easily observable indices. I've never seen education departments or programmes measuring how happy a class or a teacher is during a two-month term.

Happiness and well-being are not the general or specific objectives of a school planning. How happy is the teacher of class A? Which class is the happiest in the school? Happiness is subversion in educational spaces. The school is a social structure that represents power schemes and, to this end, the people who occupy this space take on social roles. In order to ensure that they fit in and remain in the job, teachers adopt the social mask of the conductor, often presenting themselves publicly as a stern individual. It's hard work being kind at school, you know? Students don't recognise kindness as a conductor's characteristic. For them, adults are "saying no" machines; adults determine where, when and how. 

Basically, "a good class remains seated in silence, listening and writing". Delicate, right? Because a teacher with 40 students in a class can't work if the class isn't seated, right? Everything is done so that nobody questions the established model.

Faced with all the potency of the bodies – of teachers and students – the regular education system desires only voice and hands from teachers. From students, teachers want ears, eyes and hands. 

I attend 14 classes a week, spending 1 hour and 40 minutes with each of them. I have my social masks, I confess. When I feel that I have the attention of a class, I take off the conductor's mask. Some classes understand the code and we carry on happily to the sound of music, reading, writing and observing how nature is present in the school. However, one class has already realised that I make up a character to teach. These kids, smarter than me, don't let me talk, they don't lend me their ears. Faced with this challenge, I've sought out the resources I have to ensure the quality of our meetings. 

I took clay to class and thought: "Maybe contact with the earth will create quality listening time?" The process of creating with clay is also associated with meditative practices of full concentration. Touch, contact and interaction with the earth can promote a sense of community and connection between the people in the group. But it didn't work with them.

I tried several things. Some worked partially. 

I remembered the experience I had with young Guarani artists in preparation for the Nhe'ërÿ Cycle in May 2023. I watched while they sang and danced in front of a blank canvas. Before painting, they sang the memories of Nhe'ërÿ and honoured Nhanderu with dances and sacred words. When they felt in their spirits that they were authorised to represent Nhe'ërÿ with drawings, they drew the sung and spoken words. 

That's when I decided to stop reading stories to the Third Year and started drawing the stories from the book on the whiteboard. The Adventures of the Kawã Boy, by Elias Yaguakãg, was drawn on the whiteboard and, while the class was busy reproducing the images in the half-blank half-lined notebook, I took the opportunity to tell (sometimes read) the stories. Chapter by chapter, the words took on images that were erased from the board at the end of the class. I realised that the same images found a place in the eyes, notebooks and memories created during class. One day I forgot the drawing on the whiteboard and their English teacher didn't understand the drawings. So they told her about Kawã, the indigenous boy who was protected by Ka'apora'ãga. The teacher came to me at lunchtime and said with a smile in her eyes: "They've heard and know every detail of the story. They're not just hearing you, they're listening to you".

Since we call our sharings "sowings", we need to know what the soil can give us before we throw the seed. I wanted ears, but they're visual. It wouldn't work, would it?

They listen with their eyes!

Drawings: collective construction by Class 1401 with teacher Veronica

TREADING SOFTLY ON THE EARTH OR THE FIRST SCHOOL HALF TERM – by Veronica Pinheiro

Collage: Lívia, 7 years old | Class: I am nature
Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

We reached Complexo da Pedreira through a school. We have many criticisms of the education system that homogenises thoughts and practices. The criticism is wide-ranging, not directed at teachers or a specific education department. The regular school plays its part in the project of imposing European civilisation. This imposition results in a distortion of identity for Afro-Pindoramic peoples, since the school teaches us to see through the eyes of the coloniser. Leonardo Boff once said:

"Each one reads with the eyes they have, and interprets from where their feet tread." 

By ignoring knowledge and sciences that are not intentionally contained in its manuals, the school provokes a process of deterritorialisation of children within favelas, quilombos and villages; it thus delegitimises the knowledge brought by children and families, forcing students to adopt the idiom and language of the dominator. 

I have witnessed (as a student, teacher, pedagogical coordinator and school principal) a lot of physical and symbolic violence committed within the school.Symbolic violence is the "invisible" violence that subjugates and imprisons subjects. We have a lot of critics, but we can't ignore the fact that in Brazil urbanised children and adolescents, especially in the peripheries, are so vulnerable that school can become a space for interesting constructions. So... if school is a place of homogenisation and docilisation of populations, it can also become a place of rupture. 

So what would be the disruptive element?

Cris Takuá, my teacher, teaches me not to rely on ready-made answers, but on sowing possibilities for transformation that sustain worlds. We believe in strengthening territories by awakening recent and very old memories. Since time is circular, what will be and what has already been are sensitively connected. Telling stories to wake up is not just about awakening a socio-historical consciousness, but about establishing pillars that make it possible for people to read themselves through their own eyes. 

For these and for other reasons, however, we couldn't just go to school and tell teachers and students that they need to think in a different way. We are building dialogue and bonds, not applying a proposal devoid of context. We arrived treading softly on the earth. Many of the students' parents studied at E.M.P. Escragnolle Dória as kids and were pupils of the teachers who teach their children. Some teachers have worked here for over 15 years. It's essential to hear these stories. 

We ended the first half term in great mood. The first grade teacher invited us to plan the activities for the next terms together, including the idea of a living school in her planning. Some teachers are voluntarily accompanying the children's workshops at school and the reading circles. Others found me on Instagram and made their way to Selvagem.

The principals and the pedagogical coordinator have also started to dream along with us. Even the Sun, the theme of Selvagem's 2024 study cycle, will officially become part of the school's Annual Pedagogical Project – PPA. We didn't give lectures or hold meetings to talk about the cycles to the teaching team, proselytising is not part of the Selvagem way of thinking. So how did the partnerships came about? Through the magic of the encounter. The encounter is capable of creating bonds of life in an organic, natural and confluent way.

“May we then cheer up
and cheer up once more,
Nhamandu first true father!"¹

Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

¹ Translation of excerpt from Pierre CLASTRES, 1990. A fala sagrada: mitos e cantos sagrados dos índios Guarani [1974], translated by Níeia Adan Bonatti. Campinas-SP: Papirus.

TIME AND LOVE – by Veronica Pinheiro

Let us imagine particles in space.
Each particle is an energy point. 

However, nothing exists on its own,
everything exists because there is a dance. 

In this flexible cosmos,
each body that irrupts
is a new design and
transforms everything around.1¹

Anna Dantes

In my home I have learned that it takes a community to educate a child.

"nothing exists on its own"

Having the opportunity to get back to school as a community – belonging to and bringing the Selvagem Community with me – puts me in another place, an expanded one. I have worked as a teacher in schools; for many years I was reprimanded for carrying affection and smiles in the same backpack I used to carry books. I was born and raised in a community. At home, I learned how to love with my hands. We used to work while singing and taking care of eachother. My grandpa Antônio taught my dad that singing scares off fears and protects the house. We shared the work of looking after the kids. We also shared water, food, pain and joy.

Once I heard I was too happy for someone who worked as a teacher in a public school. The observation came from another teacher. On that occasion she was responsible for organising the timetable and the workload of all the teachers. In that year I was able to fulfil my workload by attending three days a week. However, after the observation, I was assigned to work five days a week from 7am to 5pm. My punishment was to spend more time at school. Full of vacant time, I took the opportunity to get to know my workplace better. That's how I learned to observe the students, employees and all the lives that made up a scholar unit. A theatre company with 6th grade students was born from that experience, the fruit of vacant time filled with poems and songs.

In an attempt to punish affections, they resorted to time. But in Iroko's domains, time is not a punishment. Time is strength. Iroko is the very representation of the dimension of time, little known to living and dead beings, to those who were born or are about to be. Guardian of ancestrality, Iroko rules the times and strengthens the links between the past and the present. Iroko is the first tree that happened to be planted on earth. For those who descend from bantus, Iroko equals the Inquice Kitembu: the transforming wind and time's tree, time's body.

I get back to the classroom in other times, I get back as a quilombed community, pregnant of beings and dreams. It's time for dancing. It's time for wide affection. Embraced affection. I see that, little by little, children, employees, teachers and staff from Professor Escragnólle Dória Municipal School allow themselves to enter our Selvagem, our Wild dance. We dare to awaken memories that were stored by the time. We are writing notes to the transforming wind; the stone quarry where the school is located was once known as Morro da Ventania, Windstorm Hill. Through art we create sensible dialogues, in an attempt to wake up, in the urbanised beings we are, the nature we also are.

In this universe called school, my Selvagem community dances expanding life. Affecting and being affected. My community backs me up.

"While the universe expands, love coalesces."²

Photo: Veronica Pinheiro

NOTAS:
1 and 2 Notebooks Selvagem – Wild Arrow 6, Time and Love
https://selvagemciclo.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CADERNO49_FLECHA_6.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeMBCABxXCQ&t=620s&ab_channel=SELVAGEMciclodeestudossobreavida

“NA FLORESTA, EU CONSIGO FECHAR OS OLHOS” – por Veronica Pinheiro

Desenho colorido por Manuella 10 anos

Oficina 1 – O sol e floresta

Quando conectamos os seres urbanos que somos com a natureza que também somos, pegamos o caminho de volta pra casa. Voltar é um movimento tão importante quanto ir. É comum na educação falarmos de “progresso”, “avanço” e “desenvolvimento”. Parece que a vida é um movimento só de ida.

“Investir no seu desenvolvimento, com um olhar atento para o processo de aprendizagem de todo e de cada aluno é fundamental para construir trajetórias de avanço”¹. Desenvolver para avançar, Secretaria de Educação Carioca.

Numa proposta contracolonial de ensino, dizemos que desenvolvimento desconecta, que o desenvolvimento é uma variante da cosmofobia. Afirmamos que nosso caminho é de envolvimentos. 

Na busca de práticas de envolvimento, nossas oficinas de Aprendizagens Vivas evocam saberes e fazeres presentes no cotidiano e na memória. Entendemos que a corporeidade é o lugar de registros e agência, onde se articulam e se transmitem mundos. Pensamos em oficinas sinestésicas (sons, aromas, texturas, sabores e saberes), que, a partir da expressão artística, buscam possibilitar um espaço de envolvimento, criatividade e despertamento de memórias. 

De onde venho, dizem que arte é a conversa das almas; por isso, cantamos enquanto trabalhamos e dançamos enquanto lutamos. A arte e sua potência de convocação de um corpo coletivo pode, pela liberação dos sentidos, romper espaço e tempo. Romper espaço e tempo na tentativa de conectar seres urbanizados que somos com a natureza que também somos. 

Nossa primeira oficina na escola aconteceu em dia de operação policial na comunidade. Fazenda Botafogo é uma região conhecida pelos altos índices de roubos de cargas e tráfico  de drogas e animais silvestres. Romper com tempo e espaço era tudo o que eu queria naquele dia 14 de março. Começamos falando do sol e da selva. No dia anterior, nós tínhamos andado pela parte de trás do quintal da escola para ficar embaixo das árvores e ver de onde vinha a argila. Muitos não sabiam o que era argila, vários não sabiam do que era feita a argila. Ryan explica pra turma: 

– Argila é a massinha de terra.

Distribuídas argilas de muitas cores aos alunos, pedi que eles ouvissem a história com a argila nas mãos e que tentassem modelar com os olhos fechados. As mãos precisariam seguir o que a música falava. A oficina foi realizada com turmas do 2° ano do ensino fundamental (crianças com 7 anos de idade), as mesmas turmas que apresentam dificuldades em sentar para ouvir minhas aulas. 

Duas semanas antes, eu havia tentado uma atividade que pedia para que fechassem os olhos e quase nenhuma criança da turma conseguira; o incômodo entre elas foi tamanho que pesquisei sobre o tal medo do olho fechado. “Nictofobia, medo irracional do escuro”. No caso das crianças da escola, o medo do escuro não é irracional; desde pequenos são ensinados a estar atentos e vigilantes. Os perigos são reais.

No dia da oficina, no entanto, sentados e com a argila nas mãos, caminhávamos em pensamento pela floresta. Enquanto as almas conversavam, ouvi a seguinte frase: 

– Na floresta, eu consigo fechar os olhos. 

Depois disso, não lembro de muita coisa.

Photo: Professor Wagner Clayton

¹Coordenadoria de Ensino Fundamental Habilidades Curriculares 1º Bimestre 2024 Secretaria Municipal de Educação – Prefeitura do Rio de Janeiro

DELETE THAT, IT'S SHAMEFUL! – by Veronica Pinheiro

Reading room, book 3

Read the following extracts aloud:

‘And he wasn't too bright, either. He had built his whole house out of straw. Can you believe it? Who in his right mind would build a house of straw?’

‘That whole darn straw house fell down.’

‘He was a little smarter, but not much. He had built his house of sticks.’

‘So the wolf went to the next house. This guy was the First and Second Little Pigs' brother. He must have been the brains of the family. He had built his house of bricks.’

Did the story of the three little pigs really happen that way? What if the wolf decided to tell the whole thing from his point of view? 

The wolf told it and it got worse. Published by Companhia das Letrinhas, A verdadeira história dos três porquinhos[The true story of the 3 little pigs], by Jon Scieszka, is a children's book that is part of the reading room collection of Rio de Janeiro's municipal public schools. In the school where I work there are 32 copies. A primary school class has an average of 32 children, so it's a book recommended for class reading. In addition, in 2013 and 2014, the text was included in the pedagogical notebooks of the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Department of Education, with some sections – the ones that classify people who build houses out of straw or wood as ignorant – being removed. However, in the two editions of the teaching material for children in the 4th year of primary school, the passage ‘That whole darn straw house fell down’ appears.

The book A verdadeira história dos três porquinhos is supposed to be a text to prove that the Big Bad Wolf is innocent. The book's intention is to make the reader aware that the wolf was the victim of a frame-up. In the format of a diary, the wolf tells his version of the story; and I'm sad that no one has flagged it up: delete that passage, it's shameful. On the contrary, the wolf's outburst was written, revised, published and distributed to primary school children.

I would like to bring up again a piece of information that appeared in the diary of the first week: Pedreira, the favela where the school I teach at is located, has the lowest Human Development Index in the city and the state of Rio de Janeiro. As we walk along the neighbourhood's main road, we see many houses made of sticks. 

Photo of Botafogo Road. Personal Collection Lenon Suhett, who researches Geography and the School Community
(Lenon and Veronica were school headmasters together from 2019 to 2021)

A verdadeira história dos três porquinhos hurts the children directly, as well as the community and traditional populations who, demonstrating abundance, ancestral knowledge and a relationship with the land, build their houses out of straw, wood and earth. 

Carter G. Woodson says that the Eurocentric educational system is at the service of the diseducation of black Americans and calls on the black population to develop and implement a programme of their own. Reading the diary of a wolf made me remember Professor Woodson and think that we need effective decolonial educational practices and not instagrammable ones. 

Photo of a house in the Rio Silveira Guarani Village. Personal collection of Veronica Pinheiro

Over the course of the trimester, we will build our little house out of bamboo, straw and clay. The children need to know that what the wolf calls ‘unintelligent’ we call traditional knowledge, bioconstruction, and that it takes a lot of knowledge to build a house without buying anything. Indigenous peoples and quilombolas know a lot about soil, plants, where the sun rises and where the moon is in relation to the house they build; and this is all about relationships. We will retell stories, activate practices, knowledge and memories.

May the Sun help us through this journey. 

The wolf has already written what he thinks. Let's not expect anything from him.

House in the São José quilombo. The São José quilombo has existed for around 150 years and is located in the city of Valença (RJ).
É uma comunidade de descendentes de negros escravizados que vieram da Angola e do Congo, atualmente cerca de 200 quilombolas
live there and their houses are made of adobe, wattle and daub and have straw roofs.
Photo: Personal collection of Veronica Pinheiro

¹SCIESZKA, Jon. A verdadeira história dos três porquinhos(New York: Penguin Books, 1996)

THAT MISS OVER THERE WILL TALK TO YOU – by Veronica Pinheiro

Playdough: Pérola, 6 years old

In the first week of class, my job was to shelter those who cried. I thought that was funny. Then I realised the size of the responsibility. My little mates would talk about this pain in their tummies and, as well as tears, they would carry helplessness in their eyes. 

When welcoming them, I would say that I would stay there for as long as it took. I'd ask where the fear was. And their little hands would go straight to their bellies. Is it hunger? To my heart's relief, the answers were all negative. Then came the last question: I think I saw fear in your eyes; what are you afraid of?

In general, the process of schooling deterritorialises within the territory. It leaves the child's identity in the background, determines what is important or not to know, determines what to eat, how to dress, it sets the sacred apart and imposes new ways of life. The so-called universal knowledge, basic knowledge and basic education guide the curricula. Little by little, an individual becomes a class; little by little, bodies are docilised. And when we least expect it... all the drawings are painted inside the lines.

There are so many social complications that the school has become the main agency for human (de-/con-)formation, invading villages, quilombos and outskirts as an arm of the State. The school introduces children to the world. And for many, in many places, it is the only institution qualified to transmit knowledge. However, if there is a compass guiding thoughts northwards, and if it is at the service of colonialism in order to subjugate subjects and make memories numb... there must be a compass guiding thoughts southwards.

I suggest we seek to turn southwards concerning the way we are at school. Let's create safe environments for teachers and children to paint outside the lines that outline the drawings. Let's accept the troublemaker and his insubmissive body. I think that, during the process of turning southwards, life memories and the sustaining principles of the territories will be awakened. Turning southwards means pluriversalising ways of existing and relating to life. 

In a certain way, those children, who cried during the first week of school, knew that they would have to leave behind, in addition to their homes, a bit of themselves outside the school walls. I know someone is going to say: 'But some children go smiling!' Yes, I know, and those worry me the most.

ON THE WAY TO THE PEDREIRA FAVELA – by Veronica Pinheiro

We arrived at the Pedreira Favela. A complex with the lowest Human Development Index in the city and the state of Rio de Janeiro. We reached the old Ventania Hill, where the wind blew freely and howled loudly. They say that when the wind whistled in the Pedreira, you would hear nothing else. The Pedreira Hill is located in the neighbourhood of Fazenda Botafogo, between Pavuna, Costa Barros, and Acari, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Strangely, the wind has fallen silent in this place. The ruins of an old slave quarters, a cemetery of slaves, some torture instruments, and a disused quarry are the most recent layers beneath the ground of this pathway we begin to tread. 

An old train line crossed the dense forest of the Fazenda Botafogo neighbourhood. In the 1970s, the express train carried people in search of work and a new home. These stories are still heard in the territory: "I arrived at Pedreira on September 4, 1970. Until then, I lived in other places. I arrived from the state of Espírito Santo, but I am from Minas Gerais. I was accompanied by my husband and six children," says Dona Geralda, one of the first residents of the Pedreira favela complex.

Map of the Pedreira Favela - João, 6 years old

The train transformed the place where the wind sang into an intersection of body-territories. Bodies in transit came together in confluence, were strengthened, and built a community. "When we come together in confluence, we don't stop being ourselves, we become ourselves and someone else - we thrive," says Nego Bispo in his book A terra dá, a terra quer [The earth gives, the earth wants] (Ubu Editora, 2023). Confluence is a force that amplifies. This force brought Selvagem here. A solar confluence: Sun, wind, quarry, memories preserved in the earth and carried within our bodies. Corporeality is a realm of inscriptions and agency, where worlds are articulated and transmitted.

Our pathway in the Pedreira is alongside the Municipal School Professor Escragnolle Dória, for us, Casa das Crianças or the house of children. We believe in the confluence of bodies - students, teachers, plants, colours, wind, Sun. In 2024, we begin a journey of living ways of knowing within a school. The school's reading room will be our Selvagem centre of irradiation. There, we will receive 439 children per week and 19 teachers per month. There will be 200 school days; 8 art workshops (for children and teachers) and a festive gathering at the end of the year. I will serve as a teacher of reading circles and coordinator of art activities in this role. In the first 10 days of class, we have already experienced so much: from the fear of the bate-bolas, the masked clowns that dance during carnival, to fear of stray bullets during the school day. We've already read 2 books, shed tears, smiled, and played too.

In this Selvagem journey, we will engage in dialogue with children and teachers to cultivate a living school. We advocate for another way of being and existing in the world, emphasizing that life and bem viver, or living well, must be part of everyday school life. Our purpose extends beyond mere education. Aside from complying with national guidelines, we climb the Pedreira activating memories, knowledge, and practices. A solar wayfinding, encouraging us to feel, listen, create, and play. We will continue to sow seedlings, words, and worlds. Guided by the winds and bathed by the Sun, we dedicate ourselves to serving life.

¹ Brazilian Law No. 11,645, of March 10, 2008, makes it mandatory to study the history and culture of indigenous and Afro-Brazilian peoples in elementary and secondary education establishments, but does not provide for its mandatory inclusion in higher education establishments for teacher training courses, the licentiate degrees.

WEAVING BRIDGES BETWEEN WORLDS – by Cristine Takuá

"The embaúba, tuthii, is the mother-fiber because it is magical.
It can make women transform into anacondas, produce bees,
perform hunts, and weave paths that reach the celestial villages."

For a long time, I dreamed of creating an interweaving of knowledge with the presence of the Maxakali shamans and the elder Delcida with the young Guarani, so that together we could walk in the forest and exchange the knowledge of Nhe’ëry. 

Photos: Anna Dantes

Delcida Maxakali is a master of songs, stories, and the art of embaúba, being one of the main elders of the Village-School-Forest. Born in one of the oldest villages of the Maxakali Indigenous Land, in Pradinho, Delcida keeps in her memory the history of her ancestors' displacements through the territory, preserved in her songs and tales. For years, she lived in the Aldeia Verde reserve, facing enormous difficulties in accessing water. Despite her advanced age, she was one of the main leaders to decide to leave the territory in July 2020. Today, she´s a great supporter of the Living School in the Village-School-Forest, a space for the preservation of cultural heritage and environmental conservation of the Maxakali territory.

Photos: Rodrigo Duarte

It was very powerful and meaningful for the Maxakali Living School group to feel the living forest, in the songs of the birds, in the crystal-clear water, in the many medicines found along the way, and in the collected embaúba fibers. Everyone was filled with joy to collect jaborandi seedlings to take for the women to use after childbirth. 

Foto: Rodrigo Duarte

With the permission of the Ija kuery and the yãmĩyxop, from December 12 to 18, 2024, we held an artistic and spiritual residency at the Living School Mbya Arandu Porã. The meeting brought together young people from the Living School Guarani of Tekoa Rio Silveira and a Guarani family from Piaçaguera, Suri Jera, Samira Mindua, Josiane Pará, and Simone Jaxuka, 14 representatives from Living School Maxakali, coordinated by Sueli and Isael Maxakali, an artist from the Witoto people Aimema Uai, from Colombia, Freg Stokes, writer, performer, and cartographer from Melbourne, Australia, Brisa Flow, singer, composer, hip hop culture MC, and her partner Ian Wapixana, artist who, along with Caio Tupã, captured sounds during the meeting. We also had the presence of Anita Ekman, independent curator and artist, Sandra Benites, educator, curator, and representative of Funarte, Anna Dantes, editor, coordinator, and creator of Selvagem cycle of studies about life, Verônica Pinheiro, educator and coordinator of the Selvagem Learning Group, and Alice Faria, translator and coordinator of the Translations of the Selvagem group. Débora, Renata, Tajiana and Ronia, who participated through the Goethe Institute. Rodrigo Duarte, visual artist, captured images and sounds to collaboratively compose creative material from the residency, Anai Vera, anthropologist, helped organize the meeting, and Ana Estrela, anthropologist, represented the Museum of Indigenous Cultures.

Photos: Alice Faria and Rodrigo Duarte

Through exchanges, we were able to weave bridges between many worlds through art and the ancestral thinking of the peoples who gathered to transmit messages of regeneration and expansion of consciousness. The exchange between the Guarani and Maxakali people enabled a dive into the Nhe’ëry forest, Mata Atlântica [Atlantic Forest], in search of embaúba, a native plant in our forest to extract its fiber and produce arts that heal and enchant. Through songs, the Maxakali women dialogue with the ants and the spirit of the embaúba to ask for permission for its harvest. During the walks in the forest, many medicinal plants and seedlings were also identified and collected.

Photos: Anna Dantes e Carlos Papá

The Living Schools led the entire residency process. Together with the artists present, we produced a large collective canvas featuring forest beings. Some map canvases were also created, tracing the territories where the represented peoples live. The children, guided by Veronica's brilliance, worked with clay to create shapes, painted canvases with natural paints depicting animated narratives, and made drawings with leaves using the light of the Sun.

Photo: Carlos Papá

Photos: Rodrigo Duarte e Anna Dantes

On the full moon of December 14, we held a spiritual ceremony to celebrate the union of the forest peoples and to strengthen the healing processes of the body and the earth through dialogue with the spirit of the plant.

Foto: Rodrigo Duarte

Each teaching, each story told by the shamans, each song sung by the youth, children, and elders formed a bond of strength and transformation. Lightning, thunder, and strong winds accompanied the week we spent together at my home, Tekoa Rio Silveira.

The crystal-clear waters descending from the mountains of Serra do Mar enchanted everyone, especially the elder Delcida Maxakali, mother of Isael and great-grandmother of Bidé, Cassiel.

They were magical days 

Days of healing and re-enchantments

The Living Schools continue to pulse 

Within our hearts 

And deep within our

Most profound memories.

Photos: Rodrigo Duarte

*   *   *

Joining forces and desires, Selvagem and the Goethe-Institut collaborate in the realisation and documentation of the residency at the Guarani Living School within the scope of the Cosmoperceptions of the Forest project, which traverses the planetary connections of forests and their management practices for a collective cultural construction by forest peoples. With five residencies in South America and Europe, the initiative of the Goethe-Institut Rio de Janeiro centralises traditional territories, maps the environmental history of forests, and highlights scientific and cosmological connections. This project starts from existing initiatives in indigenous and traditional territories that work to regenerate relationships between many species, human and non-human, based on the ways of life of forest peoples.  

The residency at Aldeia Rio Silveira, created by Cris Takuá and Carlos Papá, brings together Indigenous leaders from various territories around the construction of the prayer house, as well as the plant laboratory and the actions of the Guarani Living School. Living School is an initiative of the Selvagem cycle. Living School strengthens and transmits traditional knowledge of various Indigenous peoples, including the Maxakali, Huni Kuï, Tukano-Dessano-Tuyuka, Guarani, and Baniwa.

LONG LIVE THE BANIWA LIVING SCHOOL – by Cristine Takuá

Personal collection of Francy Baniwa

The Baniwa Living School arrived with the Long Live the Living School page exhibition and, following the celebration and meeting we held in December 2023, together we were able to begin a new journey of strengthening and activation of knowledge and know-how.

The Baniwa collective is holding lots of classes on swiddens, arumã basketry, basketry with titica vine and imbé vine, drawings, pottery, blessings, songs, dances and indigenous literature. A very profound strength is blossoming in the Assunção do Içana community, located in the Upper Rio Negro Indigenous Territory, in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Amazonas State).

Personal collection of Francy Baniwa

Francy and her father Francisco Baniwa are the coordinators of this dream and these actions activated in their territory. Francy is a connoisseur of the swidden, the river and the forest. She is also an anthropologist and has been bringing the strength and power of her people's philosophy to the world through academic dialogues. 

She tells us that the announcement of support to encourage and strengthen a Living School in her community came with great celebration and enthusiasm from everyone – children, young people and elders.

“The wise ones spoke about the moment. Everyone was moved and remembered in so many words that we are a Living School. Our territory, our languages, the chants, sacred places, the swiddens, drylands, capoeiras, igapós, the communities, everything is a Living School, because we are knowledgeable, we are the living memory. From waking up until the end of the day, when it's time to rest, we do many things, which is why we are the Living School itself. Knowing the techniques of braiding with our fingertips is the most beautiful science there is.”

The dream of the Baniwa Living School began to blossom with the launch of the book Umbigo do Mundo [World’s Navel] – Mitologia, Ritual e Memória Baniwa Waliperedakeenai, published by Dantes. Since the launch, during the Vigil of Orality at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, a new path has been opening up, as Francy herself says: 

“I've reached this stage of bringing their words for you to know, to understand our world, how we are, and why we dance, why we heal, why we bless, why birds are the way they are, why human beings are the way they are.”

And in this dialogue with her father, together with the paintings of her brother Frank, she promotes a literary and anthropological event that deserves to be celebrated, as Idjahure Kadiwel says in the book's introduction.

Month after month, Francy tells us what is being done in her community, even though she is also activating many pathways in the city. She is studying and articulating many routes, whether in the São Paulo University chair, with indigenous women filmmakers or in her doctoral studies. Even so, she is always in communication with the teams that work directly at the Living School. Her main focus of inspiration is the children and young people – she is concerned with activating their deepest memories so that they can continue to follow in the footsteps of their saviours.

Personal collection of Francy Baniwa

“Being a child in the community, in the village, is different. Our greatest joy is when we get to the fields and come across different fruits. That's our greatest wealth. Smiles stretch far and wide! What a joy it is to be able to pick up a watermelon and eat it in the middle of the fields, while your grandmother, aunt and mother are taking care of the fields, weeding and looking after other fruits and maniocs.

The swidden is the place that brings me peace, happiness and security.

Being a swidden owner is a beautiful profession full of grit and determination.

Being a swidden owner is being a hard worker with a lot of sweat, under the rain and the sun.

Being a swidden owner means taking care of the swidden, weeding, uprooting manioc, carrying it on your back, scraping and grating it. It's not for everyone.

I'm very proud to be a swidden owner and a researcher, I'm a doctor of the swidden and of the university.

Good living

Living well

Eating organic watermelon straight from Mother Earth. Is there any greater love than that?”

Personal collection of Francy Baniwa

OPY'I, OUR TRUE SCHOOL – by Cristine Takuá

Living knowledge and practice

Photo: Cristine Takuá

For a few months now, we've been building a house of prayer in the middle of the forest for studies and concentration retreats. The whole process is being carried out with materials taken from the forest: wood, vines to tie it together, straw to cover it and clay to make the walls. A living, natural house, made with the ancient knowledge of traditional Guarani architecture. As well as technique, there is a sensitive wisdom that follows the guidance of time. There is the right time to harvest the wood, the straw and the vines.

In today's world, listening to and observing the weather is no longer the first step to practising knowledge, because everything is bought and sold all the time. Everything contains agrochemicals and insecticides, and everything ends up being disconnected from this deep sense of knowing how to wait for the time.

For this reason, carrying out this construction is a practice of the Living School, in which young people and even children take part, helping to clay the walls. In this way, we ensure and make it possible for this knowledge to live on in our memories.

Photos: Carlos Papá

Opy'i is the house of prayers, the house of healings, the house of awakenings and the place where people learn. There is a large classroom in each territory. We dance, rest, meditate and transform ourselves within this sacred house. It's a place of shelter and counselling. 

Each people names this sacred space in their own way, and all have a very intimate and true relationship with this classroom. The idea of a school is always a square place with desks, chairs and blackboards. In the house of prayer, the essential thing is the fire, the great teacher who assists the spiritual work and warms up the long nights of study.

Knowing how to get in and out of this classroom is a lesson that is taught from the time we are babies. There is an ethic that guides our relationships within Opy'i, and everyone – children, young people, men and women – has their own role and orientation in the learning process.

Photo: Carlos Papá

Fotos: Cristine Takuá

Unlike hospitals 

And health centres 

The Opy'i or prayer house 

Is not only a healing space 

But also an educational centre

The true school 

There we talk about dreams, we heal

 and we also learn good and beautiful

Ways of practising the Good Living 

Teko Porã. 

How good it is to sing, to dance 

To play Takuapu, Maracá

To feel this special place!

To be around loved ones 

Who often, even in

Silence

Transmit more messages than if they were talking

But unfortunately, today, many only seek it out  

When ailments of the body or soul affect them 

But it shouldn't be that way!

Our medicines don't come packaged in plastic like those in pharmacies, 

They flourish in the midst of waterfalls, streams, sacred mountains...

Healing men and women 

Spiritual leaders

Are just watching 

The spread of evangelicals invading

The sacred Tekoa 

The increasing influence 

Of the use of antibiotics and painkillers

The encouragement of hospital births 

It's time to wake up!

To value the traditional knowledge and practices that bring joy to our souls.

We urgently need to 

Honour the traditions of healing 

And spirituality of ancient cultures 

And thus calm 

The spirits of the forest

Who are angry 

Tired of so much contradiction

From us so-called thinking beings!