Fernanda Cristina Moreira

This project investigates and supports efforts by the Munduruku people to care for places and landscapes that maintain life and provide ?balance to the world.? The advance of extractive capital, especially the construction of hydroelectric dams and the vertiginous increase in mining in Amazonia are threatening ?places one should not disturb? (or ?sacred places?) and forcing Munduruku to abandon villages. Taking its lead from Munduruku academics, leaders, and community associations, this project seeks to visit and document these places, work that has cosmological, intellectual, and political implications. According to the Munduruku, the Tapaj’s River ? which defines their homeland in western Par’, Brazil ? is constituted by a network of living places, from which a nexus of reciprocal duties emerges between humans, spirits, animals, plants, and the land itself. Through visiting and documenting these places, this project enacts Munduruku practices of place-making and care-giving, resulting in the co-production of knowledge that further supports Indigenous Amazonians? efforts to rebalance a world thrown into chaos by megaprojects, extractivism, fires, and land-grabbing.