Indigenous spiritualities: cultural appropriation or the last salvation?
This presentation was given to Harvard Divinity School – “Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities Conference” in April 2023. Here I analyse how Indigenous spiritualities are transforming non-indigenous realities. I investigate the way non-indigenous people are using them to overcome health issues (i.e. depression), but also how they are being commodified for other […]
The social-cultural history and present of Ayahuasca
This presentation was given as part of the Breaking Convention at the Univiserty of Exeter – UK. Here I offer a journey through the historical socio-cultural aspects of ayahuasca, including its origins, past and present uses, and purposes. I discuss if and how Indigenous cosmologies and the practice of ayahuasca are being incorporated into the […]
Which Development to Sustain? Indigenous Practices and Webs of Trust
Transforming our World: Participatory-driven Approaches and the Sustainable Development Goals. Bluo Verda. 2022. This is a lecture given as part of a 3-week online course focusing on using participatory methods as essential transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral tools for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The course was organized in September 2022 by Bluo Verda, a diaspora organization […]
Amazonian Plant Medicines and Behaviour Change
Lecture given online at Harvard Divinity School Inaugural Conference on Ecological Spiritualities in April 2022. At this moment of profound ecological and health crisis, there is an urgent call for a fundamental rethinking of our attitudes toward the natural environment. This presentation explores the role of Amazonian plant medicines in promoting indigenous spirituality and how […]
Rethinking the Economy after Coronavirus
Recent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred reactions to how access to wild animals and their products may spread infectious disease from such animals to humans. This has unleashed an onslaught of debate in the scientific and related policy literature on nature conservation, human and animal rights, and efforts to alleviate global poverty among […]
Indigenous Ontologies and New Becomings
Since COVID-19 started many indigenous elders have died, raising fears that the pandemic may inflict irreparable damage on Indigenous ancestral ontologies. This presentation shows how Amazonian indigenous ontologies could help in changing anthropocentric attitudes and transitioning from the COVID-19 crisis. Global efforts to address crises are often characterized as ‘blueprints’ devoid of political and cultural […]
Pandemics, conservation and human nature relations
In this presentation, we look at the links between pandemics, conservation, and human-nature relations. We start by questioning who is invading whom? The most serious pandemics in recorded history have their causes rooted in unsustainable anthropic intervention on land and biodiversity. With the world on lockdown, rapid social changes have increased the opportunities to re-think […]
Perceiving the Amazon in the Anthropocene
This presentation was given at Oxford University in February 2020International Colloquium on Socio-Environmental Politics.Amazon: Rising Violence and Disturbing Trends. Forests and ways of relating to forests are critical to the planet. In this article, we engage with the debate on the Anthropocene and explore different forms of relationality to forests and Amazonian indigenous symbolism. Drawing […]
Memory Erasure in Terra Brasilis
‘Terra Brasilis | Indigenous Land’ was a presentation given as part of the XVI Circle of Psychoanalysis and Art – ‘Migrants: Where do they come from? Where are they going?’ at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio. I talked about the colonial history of indigenous peoples in Brazil, their resistance, their role […]
Jair Messias Bolsonaro: “the tropical Trump”
Jair Messias Bolsonaro, labelled by international social media as “the tropical Trump”, was elected in Brazil with 55% of votes. What does it mean for the world, and why all Brazilian environmentalists are so worried?
