FILM SUMMARY

Rember Yahuarcani is an Indigenous painter and one of the last surviving members of the White Heron clan of the Uitoto Nation in Peru. He left his Amazonian community to pursue a successful career in Lima, but when he finds himself in a creative rut, he returns home to visit his father, a painter, and his mother, a sculptor, and discovers why the stories of his ancestors cannot be forgotten.

USING THIS GUIDE

This guide is an invitation to dialogue. It is based on a belief in the power of human connection and designed for people who want to use The Song of the Butterfliesto engage family, friends, classmates, colleagues, and communities. In contrast to initiatives that foster debates in which participants try to convince others that they are right, this document envisions conversations undertaken in a spirit of openness in which people try to understand one another and expand their thinking by sharing viewpoints and listening actively.

The discussion prompts are intentionally crafted to help a wide range of audiences think more deeply about the issues in the film. Rather than attempting to address them all, choose one or two that best meet your needs and interests. And be sure to leave time to consider taking action. Planning next steps can help people leave the room feeling energized and optimistic, even in instances when conversations have been difficult.

For more detailed event planning and facilitation tips, visit communitynetwork.amdoc.org.

THE FILM

KEY PARTICIPANTS:

Rember Yahuarcani- Indigenous artist, writer, and activist who travels from Lima to Pebas to visit with his family

Santiago Yahuarcani López- Rember’s dad and a visual artist who lives with his family in Pebas

Nereida López Gutierres - Rember’s mother and a sculpture artist who lives with her family in Pebas

Martha López - Rember’s grandmother and a member of the White Heron clan of the Uitoto Nation who maintains a spiritual connection with Rember after having passed away

KEY ISSUES:

The Song of the Butterflies is an excellent tool for outreach and will be of special interest to people who want to explore the following topics:

• historical trauma and recovery
• colonial pasts and systemic racism
• extractive violence
• cultural resurgence
• Indigenous empowerment
• community and family
• art and activism
• historical memory

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The Uitoto Nation and the Indigenous People of the Amazon Basin

Rember Yahuarcani, the main subject of this film, is a member of the White Heron clan of the Uitoto Nation. The Uitoto (also spelled Witoto or Huitoto) are one of the many indigenous nations from the area along the Caquetá and Putumayo rivers within the Amazon Basin. Their densely forested territory, called the Amazonías region, is south of what is now Colombia and north of the border of what is now Peru. Since ancient times, these territories have been populated by the Uitoto and many other Indigenous peoples, such as the Ocaina, Nonuya, Bora, Miraña, Muinane, and Andoque. Indigenous clans of the area, many of which traditionally lead nomadic and hunter-gatherer lifestyles, created richly diverse communities shaped by their evolved relationships with the land and their distinct cultural cosmologies. Today, there are many uncontacted tribes in this region that still practice their traditional ways of life.

Some Uitoto clans like the White Heron refer to themselves as the “People of the Center” or the “Children of Tobacco, Coca, and Sweet Yucca” (Hijos de Tabaco, la Coca y la Yuca Dulce in Spanish). Honoring the natural environment was and is central to their ever-evolving way of life. They held an important connection to the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis)native to the Amazonías region. They used liquid latex tapped from the tree to construct important tools, such as shoes, bags, clothes, bouncing balls, sports accessories, waterproofing material, and other everyday items. Although European settler colonialism reached the Amazonías region as early as the 17th century, it wasn’t until these trees’ economic potential was discovered by Europeans in the 19th century that Indigenous tribes such as the Uitoto experienced a major disintegration of their societies.

The Tragedy of Rubber Mining

When the rise of industry and commercial manufacturing in Europe and the U.S. created a high demand for rubber within the emerging global market, the Caquetá-Putumayo region became the target of barbaric rubber barons who settled there seeking to establish an economic monopoly using indigenous slave-labor. This time period is known as the rubber boom era and saw what has been labeled one of the worst population declines in world history. Many clans in the region were violently displaced, forced into slave labor, or murdered at the hands of the rubber barons or by the waves of epidemics they brought.

Much of what we know about what happened during the rubber boom era comes from the oral histories of survivors’ descendants and the stories and myths they have passed down through the generations. There are also written accounts from the travel logs of those who explored the area during that time, such as that of American engineer Walter Hardenburg and British consul Roger Casement.

Walter Hardenburg came to the Putumayo region to work on railroad construction and join in the rubber boom in 1908. Before making it to his destination he was captured and imprisoned by a group of men who worked for Julio César Arana, the owner of Casa Arana, an infamous British-Peruvian rubber company in Putumayo. Because political control had yet to be established for a centralized government, entrepreneurs like Arana were often encouraged to protect the area from foreign invaders as Peruvian and Colombian political leaders engaged in border wars. At the time, this granted rubber barons like Arana impunity in their criminal endeavors in the Amazonías, and they justified their behavior with white supremacist logic and twisted notions of social Darwinism.

After spending a year in captivity at Casa Arana, Hardenburg was finally set free in 1909. He then made his way to London with the goal of exposing the brutal treatment he had witnessed. That same year, he published some of his accounts in a periodical called Truth and described in great detail the horrors that the enslaved Indigenous people endured. He noted the sadistic ways in which indigenous tribes were treated in comparison to his own treatment as a prisoner. From inhumane working conditions to grotesque torture and murder tactics, extreme violence toward clansmen was the norm—as was punishment for unmet rubber quotas or simply as heinous entertainment for the rubber barons.

When this information entered the public eye in Britain, it caught the attention of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, which then lobbied the British government to investigate. Because Casa Arana was technically a British enterprise, the government felt pressured to determine a course of action. In 1910, British consul Roger Casement was sent to the Putumayo region to collect more accounts about the overseers who worked for Arana. He spent time surveying the dynamics in La Chorrera, the territory where Casa Arana had set up shop, and the surrounding Putumayo region. Upon returning to Britain, he published a report in July 1912 that went into further detail about the horrifying reality of the operation and confirmed Hardenburg’s personal accounts.

In 1913, the House of Commons responded with a committee on the Putumayo region. Julio César Arana was summoned to be questioned about the allegations about his company. Although he attempted to justify himself by claiming his company was helping to “civilize” natives and encourage economic development, Casement and Hardenburg testified against him, and the details of the atrocities at Casa Arana came to light. After this hearing, he quickly liquidated the company in an effort to avoid being held accountable for his crimes. It was around this time that the rubber tree seeds that had been smuggled out of the Putumayo region and planted in British Asian colonies reached full maturity and became available to the global market, marking the end of the rubber baron regime. During the six years that Arana’s company operated (1907 through 1913), he raked in 75 million dollars in profit, all the while devastating the social infrastructure of Putumayo tribal communities, drastically reducing their overall population, and leaving them with an open historical wound.

Contemporary Concerns for the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazonías

In 2012, the Colombian government made a public apology for the nation’s complicity in the rubber boom. The president of Colombia, Juan Santos, vowed to prevent this violence from being repeated and to protect Indigenous peoples and lands. Yet, as the Indigenous tribes of the Amazonías seek to rebuild from the atrocities of the colonial past, they continue to face new forms of environmental violence that prevent a full recovery. The effects of settler colonialism in the region continue to perpetuate destruction and exploitation of Indigenous nations and lands, continuing the patterns of social stress and cultural degradation. Contemporary environmental threats like coca fumigation, oil mining, and mineral extraction, combined with more sustained threats like climate change and human trafficking, still pose significant challenges for all Indigenous people of the Amazonías region.

One pressing contemporary concern that is still being debated today is that of aerial fumigation. In an attempt to decrease cocaine production and trafficking in Colombia, aerial fumigation was funded by the United States and Colombian governments beginning in 1996. The toxic herbicide glyphosate was haphazardly sprayed over suspected coca farms, causing contamination and health concerns for the Indigenous peoples and their lands. The program was eventually discontinued after health concerns were raised by the World Health Organization in 2015, but by that time 242,065 of Putumayo’s 363,967 residents had been forcibly displaced from their homes, primarily as a direct result of the aerial spraying. Coca is a plant of both spiritual and practical use for the Uitoto and other Indigenous tribes of the area. Mambé, or mashed, roasted coca mixed with the ashes of yaruma leaves, is a staple medicine also used as a storytelling tool and for protection. This is an example of how Indigenous worldviews and traditional ways of living are not honored by the governments and NGOs that create policies that directly affect them.

As globalizing capitalism continues to push for industrial development projects in these territories, there is an urgent need to respect indigenous peoples’ demands for autonomy and self-determination. There are still many unanswered questions stopping them from making a full recovery from these historical wounds, and these peoples and lands are still being threatened by the environmental violence of modern extractive economies. Only when Indigenous sovereignty is centered in approaches to healing, recovery, and the rights to ancestral homelands and territories and resources are respected will the historical wound of displacement, genocide, cultural destruction, and marginalization fully close.

Art and Indigenous Resurgence

There is a need for community-based and culturally safe forms of resistance and revival that don’t solely depend on the state for justice— a concept known as Indigenous resurgence. In recent years, this has been the phrase used for the processes of cultural regeneration for Indigenous people who seek pathways to liberation and self-determination outside of the structure of colonial nation-states and their associated epistemologies. Artistic practices open up decolonial pathways to Indigenous resurgence by using the body as a site to (re)produce modes of being, knowing, and doing that are outside of the patterns of colonial marginalization. Because of this, art can play an important role in the process of healing from historical wounds and can transform how Indigenous communities respond to violence.

Art has always played a central role in the creation and expression of cultural practices and worldviews, and it has the capacity to liberate, educate, and heal. This process is never static, but rather always in a constant state of change and adaptation. In 2015, Jarrett Martinueau described the resurgent potential of Indigenous art-making:

Colonialism is an invasive structure that orders but does not define our reality. Although it works to dispossess us of our lands and bodies and to colonize our consciousness, it is not a totalizing system. We have always resisted; and our resistance shapes both howwe imagine and whatwe create. Indigenous creativity provides us with inventive forms of decolonizing praxis: methods of resistance, techniques of resurgence. To consider Indigenous art in relationship to decolonization, then, is to consider the potential for creativity to be brought into direct relationship with political struggle. In this view, decolonization becomes more than a political commitment; it becomes an art of creative combat, a collective practice of freedom. As we move defiantly into the twenty-first century, Indigenous existence must be continue fought for—and art-making continues to be a necessary strategy for our survival. As we struggle to reclaim, regain, and revitalize the land-based practices and knowledge that have sustained us for generations, our nations are increasingly threatened by shape-shifting forces of Empire produced at the nexus of global capitalism and settler colonialism. While admitting the ambivalent necessity of confronting colonialism, we are now also challenged to navigate the new terrain of the technologized present, evolving networked landscapes of the mediatized, the digital, and the virtual…. In conjoining conscientization, cultural action, and revolution, Indigenous resurgence works to overturn the dominating conditions of colonial oppression, while reasserting the integrity and validity of Indigenous knowledge systems, cultural forms, and aesthetics. In this sense, resurgence can be understood to support anticolonial struggle insofar as it is conceptualized and mobilized from within Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies.

Against the backdrop of a deep history of exclusion, misrepresentation, appropriation, and assimilation, art allows Indigneous people and other marginalized identities to disrupt the normative order of colonial oppression. Artists can strip off the many layers of censorship imposed upon them by the modern-colonial world, carve spaces of social critique, and/or hold the space from which counter-hegemonic realities can come into being.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS

Starting the Conversation

Immediately after the film, you may want to give people a few quiet moments to reflect on what they have seen. You could pose some general questions (examples below) and give people some time to themselves to jot down or think about their answers before opening the discussion. Alternatively, you could ask participants to share their thoughts with a partner before starting a group discussion.

• What emotions came up for you while watching the film?
• What did you learn from this film? What prior knowledge did you have, and how did that affect how you watched the film?
• What surprised you the most about the film? What was left unclear for you, if anything?
• Which scene in the film had the most impact on you? Why?

Creative Arts and Storytelling

We meet Rember Yahuarcani in his apartment in the heart of Lima, Peru, the city where he spends most of his time working on large mixed-media paintings, writing, and other creative projects. His brushstrokes are incredibly detailed, producing vibrant bodies of work that tell the stories of his cultural cosmology. What was your first reaction to Rember’s artwork? What adjectives would you use to describe Rember’s paintings?

We see images imbued with the vibrant flora and fauna of his homeland, as well as creatures that embody mythic personas and character arcs. What might this artwork reveal about Rember’s connection to his culture and his ancestral homelands? What story can you see being told through Rember’s artwork, if any?

We learn that Rember has an ancestral connection to his grandmother Martha, who passed away some years ago. Rember talks about how his grandmother guides him in his creative expression, citing her as both a source of inspiration and a source of knowledge on his history and heritage. He says:

My grandmother, Martha, used to think, or to believe, that I was going to become one of her voices. I didn’t really understand that until very recently. Martha is always here, always with me. When I smoke a tobacco, when I hold the paintbrush, when I paint a character that she has described to me. She’s my inspiration. My work is… My work is her, what she has told me. I believe that my work is the way she understood the Amazonía, our history… I can hear my grandmother’s voice when I am painting. And if I can hear her voice, I imagine that the painting should be fine. My biggest concern is if I’m a really good translator of what my grandmother gave me.

What does Rember’s commitment to being a “good translator” say about his values? What does it say about his reverence for his culture and his grandmother’s teachings?

When Rember finds himself in need of creative inspiration, he travels from the city of Lima to his parents’ home in Pebas to spend quality time with his family. His mother, Nereida López Gutierres, is a sculptor and his father, Santiago Yahuarcani López,is a painter. They both use their crafts to reflect and narrate the history of their people. How does Rember’s artistic style and thematic content compare to those of his parents? What’s the significance of Rember’s father telling children that the story is more important than the aesthetic qualities of the artwork? What is the significance of Rember choosing to focus on the beauty of his homeland and heritage rather than the historical violence his people endured?

When Rember expresses that he has been experiencing a creative block, his parents encourage him to keep creating and exploring his cultural roots. What key messages about the importance of cultural knowledge are Rember’s parents imparting? Why are those messages important to the resilience of the Uitoto people? What do these messages imply about the role of creative expression in cultural resurgence? How do creativity, art, and performance play into your vision of justice?

In your view, what is the importance of connecting to loved ones during times of hardship or creative blocks? What role does your community play when you’re working through internal difficulties? What does that role say about your culture, worldview, or way of life?

We see Rember’s parents use creative activities to educate Rember’s younger siblings: his father guides a history lesson through collective painting and his mother passes down stories while teaching traditional mask-making techniques. What was significant about the father telling the children that the story is more important than the aesthetics of the painting? What is similar about Santiago’s and Nereida’s approaches to passing down generational knowledge through the arts? What is different?

Family and Cultural Memory

Rember is on a journey to reconnect with the cultural memory of his family and tribe, and he feels a compelling sense of duty to confront the darkness his people endured while he paves new pathways forward. While he stays in Pebas with his family, we see him honoring traditional ways and learning more about his cultural heritage while also doing normal day-to-day activities like sharing meals, communing with tobacco, and harvesting cassava root. What are some other ways that you witnessed Rember and his family choosing to honor their cultural heritage? What does their observance of their traditional ways of life say about their cultural values?

In the scene where Rember and his father are tapping rubber trees for latex, we hear Rember’s grandmother Martha narrate a poem over the quiet echoes of the forest soundscape:

That’s how our parents worked,

That’s how they extracted the rubber.

And that’s how our root was taken out.

They killed us, they threw us to the fire.

And the healing words of our grandparents are already lost.

Who will tell our story?

This poem is referring to the rubber boom era and the loss experienced during those years. Why do you think the directors chose to overlay Martha’s poem over the rubber tapping scene? Who do you think is the intended audience of this poem, if any? What meaning can you find in Rember and his father tapping native rubber trees years after the tragedy of rubber in the area?

Does your community, family or cultural heritage deal with historical trauma? If so, how are you able to engage and communicate with others about it? How do the creative arts play a role in that, if any?

Think about how the Uitoto rubber tapping techniques predated the tragedy of rubber. In many settler-colonial contexts, there is a historical pattern of misusing or exploiting Indigenous cultural practices for profit. How are Indigenous practices exploited and appropriated today? Has your family, tribe, or group experienced the impact of cultural appropriation? If so, how do you respond? What culturally safe and community-based methods can you employ in your community to resist cultural erasure/ethnic cleansing?

How is the rubber boom situated within a broader social, political, cultural, and historical context of perpetual state violence inherent to settler colonialism? How can traumatic individual and collective memories be spoken about in a way that highlights Indigenous resurgence, agency, resistance, sovereignty, and solidarity? In a more general sense, how can outsiders speak about these tragedies in a way that doesn’t re-victimize or re-violate Indigenous identities?

What are the benefits of building a society that is fully aware of its cultural heritage and past traumas? How can the discussion of traumatic histories result in greater respect and dialogue rather than arouse aggressive or vengeful potential? How can we discuss these historical topics in a way that allows individuals to be more sensitive to human rights and land violations?

In your view, how early in life should children be taught the traumatic histories of their lineage? What are the benefits and challenges of discussing the violent details of a given history with young children? How can we do so in a way that honors their painful collective memory and also contextualizes the present-day issues they face?

Healing and Community

After leaving his parents home, Rember travels to La Chorrera, the heart of his ancestral homeland. Here, he meets with current members of the White Heron clan, the Uitoto tribe his grandmother was a part of. They greet him with open arms, and a ceremony is planned to officially welcome him as a member of the clan. Do you have experiences with a rite of passage? If so, what significance did it hold for you? Do you have a belief system that involves the concept of ancestral connection or ancestral healing? If not, what are some ways that you can develop open-mindedness when hearing about worldviews or narratives that don’t necessarily fit into your own worldview?

During the ceremony, traditional Uitoto songs, dances, and prayers are performed, and Rember is given a new name in a Uitoto dialect. Why do you think it is important for Rember to reconnect with his ancestral lineage in this way? How does this help him make sure the voice of his grandmother doesn’t get lost? How is this film’s focus on Rember’s family and Uitoto traditions a political statement?

While in La Chorrera, Rember travels to the building where Casa Arana once stood. It has since been turned into a secondary school. How do you feel about the decision to turn the place where Julio César Arana and others built a legacy of torture and enslavement into a place of learning? How did you feel watching the scenes of the building? There is a moment where contemporary footage of the building is overlaid with an old photo of the building with slaves and overseers lined up out front. What impact did that scene have on you?

Take a moment to think about what was lost from the genocide, displacement, and slavery of the rubber boom: lands, clans/families, language, cultural knowledge, land practices, and so on. Now think about the contemporary concerns the Indigenous people of the Amazonías are forced to face today, in terms of land displacement, environmental destruction, human trafficking, and so on. What has changed since the 19th century? What has remained the same? Consider the ongoing impact of globalization, capitalism, and settler-colonialism. What are some ways that you see extractive economies disproportionately impacting Indigenous peoples today? How can extractive industries cause social and biological violence? What needs to change now, in your view?

How do you think Indigenous people of the Amazon basin should be given reparations by the government? In what ways could a meaningful reconciliation take place? How might they be compensated? What is missing from the conversations that government officials are having about reconciliation?

Today, Indigenous nations and individual leaders in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and other surrounding countries are still fighting for their sovereignty to be honored and coalition-building for international solidarity. How might increased knowledge about the historical trauma of the rubber boom inform the ways workplaces/communities/societies/cultures/individuals promote Indigenous resurgence in the Amazonias? How do we move forward in a way that ensures history doesn’t repeat itself? How do we amplify the voices of those most impacted by race-based/gender-based violence and systematic disenfranchisement? Why would it be important to raise awareness among non-Indigenous people about the dark past of industrial projects in the Amazonías?

The last scene of Rember’s travels shows him speaking with some women of the White Heron clan who knew and were related to his grandmother. One woman explains that the women in their tribe are the “essence of sweet cassava” and that their “hearts are cheerful and warm.” As she wishes him well on his journey, she tells him that they “don’t want his heart to become cold” so that he can “continue to spread the sweet word” of his ancestors. Why do you think Rember is encouraged to face the dark past of his cultural memories without letting his heart “become cold”? Why might that be important to Indigenous resurgence? Why do you think the directors chose to end the film on this scene? What does it say about the purpose of the film as a whole?

Closing Questions/Activity:

At the end of your discussion, to help people synthesize what they’ve experienced and move the focus from dialogue to action steps, you may want to choose one of these questions:

• What did you learn from this film that you wish everyone in your community was aware of? What might change if everyone knew this information?
• The story of The Song of the Butterflies is important because ___________.
• Complete this sentence: I am inspired by this film (or discussion) to __________.
• Why do you think the film is called The Song of the Butterflies? Think about butterflies as a symbol of transformation, as well as the clips of butterflies in the film and the story of butterflies flying out of the fallen clansmen.

Taking Action

If the group is having trouble generating their own ideas for next steps, these suggestions can help get things started:

• Learn more about contemporary concerns for the Indigenous peoples of the Amazonías. Investigate the evolving status of fumigation and mining projects happening in the Amazonías today. Look into what NGOs, companies, and agencies are invested in the profit of these projects. How are Indigenous leaders responding today?
• Practice land acknowledgement. Make a list of Indigenous people who live and/or have lived in your area and seek to learn more about the history of the people whose land you stand upon. When writing, speaking, or engaging with the public, get in the habit of verbally acknowledging the Native people and history of the area. Take this a step further by building a relationship with local Indigneous community leaders or groups. If applicable, learn about and uplift their activism. As the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture states in its guide to land acknowledgement, “Acknowledgement by itself is a small gesture. It becomes meaningful when coupled with authentic relationship and informed action.” Use the following website for more information.
  • Honor Native Land: A Guide and Call to Acknowledgement.U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. https://usdac.us/nativeland/
• Bring together a study group to research forms of environmental violence in your city or region. Look into what extractive industries or projects in your area are negatively affecting biological, social, and environmental health. Discuss what you find with your family and friends. Make an action plan with your community on how to respond. What do personal healing and land healing mean to you? How can we heal the environment of the body and mind as well as heal the environment of our territory and culture? Use the Violence on the Land, Violence on Our Bodies guide (in the resources section) for more information on environmental violence.
• Join and/or hold a fundraiser to support Indigenous resurgence.Look for local and national organizations doing important work to uplift Indigenous culture in the Amazonías. Put together or join a community event geared toward donating to or supporting the community or signing petitions. Focus on grassroots organizations that are run or led by Indigenous people or nations. If you are not Indigenous, consider how you can play a more supportive role in solidarity with their struggles.
• Support Rember Yahuarcani’s art and literary work.
  • Share his story and his artwork on social media and tag him. His handle is @rember_yahuarcani on Instagram.
  • Read and share his written work, such as the following article:
    • Yahuarcani, Rember. “Bicentenario: El Genocidio Cauchero En El Putumayo y Otras Memorias De La Amazonía.” El Comercio, 8 Aug. 2021.

RESOURCES

• Hardenburg, Walter Ernest. Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Andes an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein. T. Fisher Unwin, 1912. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45204/45204-h/45204-h.htm#Footnote_123_123
  This book was written by Walter Hardenburg during his travels to the Putumayo region during the rubber boom era.

• Moloney, Anastasia. “Indigenous Tribes Launch Emergency Motion to Protect 80% of Amazon Rainforest.” Global Citizen, 30 Aug. 2021. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/indigenous-amazon-iucn/
  This article discusses how Amazon tribes have filed a formal motion to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in efforts to protect 80 percent of the Amazon by 2025.

• Native Youth Sexual Health Network and Women’s Earth Alliance. Violence on the Land, Violence on Our Bodies: Building an Indigenous Response to Environmental Violence. 2014. http://landbodydefense.org/uploads/files/VLVBReportToolkit2016.pdf.This guide was written by Indigenous women and youth who draw connections between environmental harm, cultural disintegration, and gender-based violence to produce a new framework.

• OAS. Situation of Human Rights of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Pan-Amazon Region, OAS, 29 Sept. 2019. https://oas.org/en/IACHR/reports/IA.asp?Year=2019 .
  This Inter-American Commission report covers the legal frameworks and public policies that affect Indigenous people of the Amazon Basin.

• Trask, Haunani Kay. “The Color of Violence.” Social Justice 31, No. 4 (2004): 8–16.
  This article offers a groundbreaking theory of violence against Indigenous people from the perspective of U.S. colonialism in Hawaii.

• Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2021.
  A warning against the history of imperialistic research, this book is an excellent resource for anyone interested in researching Indigenous livelihoods and cultures in a decolonial way.

• “Uncontacted Tribe under Threat after Senator’s Secret Plot to Open up Their Territory.” Survival International, 27 Jan. 2021. https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/12523
  This website documents how current land protections in Brazil are being revoked by the government to open up possibilities for more industrial extraction projects.

About the Author:

Sadé Holmes
Sadé Holmes is a Boricua based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Among many other things, she is a multi-disciplinary artist, musician, performer, scholar, writer, community organizer, and event curator. In 2018 she earned a B.A. in music and cultural studies from the New College of Florida, where she wrote, published, and defended a thesis rooted in decolonial poetics and black feminist thought. Holmes believes that another world is possible and seeks to use her creative and scholarly work as medicine, as offering, and as a way to center the critical imagination and foster collective empowerment, cultural resurgence, and holistic wellness.

Discussion Guide Producer:

Courtney B. Cook, PhD | Education Manager, POV

This resource was created, in part, with the generous support of the Open Society Foundation.