BoCA Summer School: Body and Nature

In this first workshop, guided by the Amerindian perspective, the collective proposes a practice and reflection on the role of art in the process of strengthening bodies in a Huni Kuin society. When children are born, for example, the Huni Kuin paint them with the dye they extract from the jenipapo fruit, so that the chants can penetrate their skin and strengthen their bodies. This is just one of the many traditional rites of this people, rich in elements that connect worlds.
In the Body and Nature workshop, the indigenous collective and participants go through a non-dualist worldview and an epistemological construction in an Amazonian society. During the two-day programme, each body will take on different faces: sometimes an instrument, sometimes a collective vessel, sometimes a support for artistic, symbolic and communicative intervention with nature through the discovery of painting. The workshop ends with a ritual performance by Katxa Nawa, involving dance, song and movement, in a participatory manifestation that evokes fertility and potency for humans, plants and animals.

BIOGRAPHIES

Zenira Neshane Huni Kuin
Zenira Neshane is the daughter of Maria Sabino Huni Kuin and Sabino Ixã Huni Kuin, two important leaders of the Huni Kuin people. From an early age, Neshane learnt from her mother about handicrafts, graphics, cooking and women’s knowledge within the tradition of her people. As well as being a teacher and artisan, she is one of the few Huni Kuin women recognised as a shaman, as she carries a lot of knowledge about the traditional medicine practices of her people. Neshane is also a forerunner of the Huni Kuin feminist movement, being one of the first women from her indigenous land to leave the territory, leading workshops and cultural exchange activities in different states in Brazil and abroad.

Sabino Dua Ixã
Sabino Dua Ixã is a Huni Kuin elder who acts as a political and spiritual leader. He lived and worked in the rubber plantations, actively participated in the struggle for the right to demarcate his land and studied with great shamans to become one of the greatest masters of the Huni Meka (ceremonial songs) of the Huni Kuin people. Sabino lives with his entire family in one of the most distant villages on the Upper Jordan River, a place where very few consumer goods arrive from the city and where deep communication with the territory is maintained.

Txaná Nixiwaka
Txaná Nixiwaka Huni Kuin is from a young generation of Txanás, or shaman artists, from the village furthest from the Jordan River. Since childhood, he has dedicated himself to the study of traditional song, painting and drawings related to the traditions of his people. He is married to one of the granddaughters of Sabino Dua Ixã, whose pupil he is, and was invited by him to leave his village for the first time to represent his community.

Mediation, Research and Production

Rodrigo Moreiras
Rodrigo Moreiras is a psychologist from PUC-Rio and has a master’s degree in Archaeology from the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. He has been working with the Huni Kuin people for 16 years, through projects on indigenous health, financial autonomy, infrastructure, ethno-tourism and cultural exchange. He is the founder of the Guardiões Huni Kuin collective in Rio de Janeiro and the Guardiões da Floresta Institute, where he acts as scientific director, organises cultural exchange experiences in different countries and coordinates the Huni Kuin Expedition project. He also works clinically, relating the knowledge of psychology to the knowledge of native peoples in different individual and collective therapeutic processes.

Mariana Carvalho
Mariana Carvalho is a cultural producer and educator with a research degree in indigenous education from the Cândido Mendes University in Rio de Janeiro. She has been working with the Huni Kuin people for 16 years through projects related to indigenous education, cultural exchanges, infrastructure and financial autonomy. She is the founder of the Guardiões Huni Kuin collective in Rio de Janeiro and of the Guardiões da Floresta Institute, where she serves as vice-president, coordinates the institute’s cultural exchange programme, the Expedição Huni Kuin project and cooperates in improving the infrastructure conditions of the villages in the Rio Jordão indigenous land.

Consultancy, Mediation and Curatorship

Ana Rocha
Ana Rocha, choreographer, curator and performer, has been mediating in the field of culture and the arts for 23 years. Ana works in fields of multiplicity and cultural diversity, connecting points of reflection and transition by accompanying and consulting institutions, non-profit organisations, artistic collectives and national and international creators. She has a degree in Visual Arts and Art History and is studying for a PhD in Human Ecology at the New University of Lisbon.