 Alright, okay, well we can record the discussion as well and pause it if we need to but in the meantime welcome to a session that we have organised with Les Levedo. Thank you very much Les for being with us. This is actually normally just a session for my students on the module Political Ecology of Development. We have a kind of open slots because we can't all get together and hang out physically so we have a kind of open slot to sort of a space where we can do other stuff and interact in other ways and some of that's around just our own core stuff but some of it's around opening up and just taking advantage of things that are happening around us and a conversation between myself and some colleagues and Les led to this seminar being set up and very grateful to Les for making the time to come and talk to us. Les is at the open university and he's going to be talking to us today about the ways in which traditional communities in Brazil are mobilising particular elements of culture around agri-food and musical elements of culture for a kind of territorialised development. Les is going to tell us all about what that means and how it is encapsulated in the phrase to conserve is to resist or preserve and resist. Is that right? Is that what it would be in Brazilian Portuguese? Okay. I'm not murdering that too much. Les, I think without further ado I will really sort of hand it over to you to hear about this fascinating way of mobilising through conservation as a sort of umbrella space if you like or a holding space for all kinds of interesting sort of cultural facets around agri-food and musical dynamics. So over to you, Les. Hello. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for joining us. So here's the title to conserve is to resist which comes from the communities which are the focus of the talk and I'll explain the other terms as we go along. Next, thanks to Andrew for giving the PowerPoint slide so I can focus on what I'm saying. So this comes from our research project short name agroecos and you see the little symbol after the ecos and the next slide explains why. And the next slide. So the full title, official title agroecology based solidarity economy in Bolivia and Brazil funded by the EGCRF program led by Yoyu, so after the project started we had a long discussion about a short catchy title and hit upon agroecos meaning that these solidaristic agroecological practices echo across time and space thus being widely replicated. This talk will give a retrospective view from before the COVID-19 crisis I mean from almost before the project began in one of the case study areas called the Bocaina on the northern coast between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. It has many origins back in 2017 our main partner in Brazil, UNESCO, State University of São Paulo organized a visit there eventually leading to our current project and then last autumn a different unit at the OU organized a mini conference called eco creativity which was the spur for me to connect what I'd already was studying with the musical cultures and that also connected with my personal history of singing learning songs from many parts of the world over about four decades we'll come back to that at the end of the discussion so next slide yeah so as the general context in Brazil there's the concept umiridages tradition ish in many coastal areas especially diverse traditional communities who gained livelihoods from resource slight activities for centuries of course some of them would be indigenous people before the Portuguese colonizers and then other communities since then but these communities increasingly lacked security of land tenure or security of access to local resources all this has been jeopardized by several changes real estate development or just speculation or land grabbing with a view towards future financial gain predatory tourism and capital intensive agriculture the concept traditional communities highlights their communal use and sustainable management of natural resources and this concept was embedded into a new policy framework in 2005 as it was an agenda to help protect those communities the term traditional can be pejorative example meaning backwards resisting progress yet the term has come to incorporate new collective identities stimulated by territorial conflicts and regular mobilizations to defend land rights and that will be illustrated by this case study in the buccana sub region the same name as a national park which includes three coastal towns as we'll see on the next slide the map the big red area is one of the national parks is a protected area more on that later and then in the middle you see Parati one of the towns and then on the left uba-tuba on the way to Santos and then Sao Paulo and then on the right agredos rice on the way to Rio de Janeiro so those three towns comprise the the network which is the focus of the study here on the next slide so the forum the community is traditionally set a community was established in 2006 it is built unity among the three traditional communities namely indigenous guaraní the colombolas who are descendants of escaped slaves and casadas descendants of portuguese settlers who remained in the remote coastal areas and i'll explain more about each of those groups when we come to them in term the fct promoted into community solidarity through cooperative initiatives to protect national resources to develop an agroecological form of agroforestry and build community-based tourism and thereby to oppose various threats while providing more secure incomes for the people as a general motto which was launched formally in 2014 to conserve is to resist the next slide you'll see that on their logo preserve our irresistible and defensive the traditional territories and the logo you see symbolizes the unity of the three communities with the agroecological agroforestry and fishing artisanal fishing now next slide now they all continue and elaborate their musical cultures strongly grounded in dance these cultures have been shared at public festivals in education programs in political protests and fct events so we'll just look briefly at the 10th anniversary celebration in 2016 which features these briefly you know each of those cultures so we move to the youtube film the beginning you'll see the yongo of the kilombolas and then briefly you'll see the kaisara is playing from dango but you won't hear it sorry there's how much do you want in this video yeah just to move it along now i think it was three minutes 40 seconds it's this one's four minutes 48 do you want to see three three minutes 47 so this one says one minute three of four minutes 48 is there should i just keep going okay sure sorry yeah we've been along now this organization is called the community yeah that's it culture And the forum came to contribute to this. Faladão, your culture has no value, it is valued for you, for us, for the world. We do not have a magazine, we do not privatize the beach, we do not live in this territory for anyone. This territory is ours, we will take care of it. And that is the struggle of the forum. Sorry, I couldn't hear you there. I was also getting really interested in what they were saying. So are we going back to the slides now, Nez? Yeah, I think the next one. I see. The next slide, okay. Just a second. A different screen now. Agar. They're musical cultures. Yeah. So, shall I move on, Nez? Yes. Yeah, next slide. Okay. Yeah, and that's the coordinator who you saw speaking before, but now you can read what he said in English. But actually that was in a newspaper interview. It is not easy to bring together the three groups, given their different cultures, but we are taking important steps. He's being perhaps unduly modest about their achievements. Yeah, next. I've taken as a research question here, I mean likewise for the talk I gave last November. How do the three communities think their agri food and musical cultures and all the new forms. How do they mobilize such cultures to defend their territory to resist the dominant development model and to create alternatives. So, move on. For several centuries, such communities continue their traditional lives, featuring light forms of agroforestry, fishing and crafts, which were later called artisanal to distinguish them from industrialized forms of production. And fortunately for them, the area had difficult access from the large cities which weren't very far away. Well, the major change came in the 1970s with the Rio Santos motorway, Rio to the east and Santos to the west on the way to Sao Paulo. So this meant that people from those major cities could reach the area much more quickly. And that then facilitated what are called modernization agendas such as urbanization and civil construction associated with predatory tourism and second homes where people would stay for part of the year. So, the land conflicts have existed for a long time, but new finds natural incentives for so-called development sharpen those conflicts. And then, especially the real estate developers got armed men to threaten or use violence to expel many residents and kept everyone under continuous insecurity. I mean, now that many of them were deprived of access to land or to natural resources, many residents found low paid insecure work in larger towns to earn a living. Others sought to remain on the land and to try to gain livelihoods there despite the obstacles. So next slide. Now, given the great environmental degradation of this modernization agenda, they were calls to limit that. So the government eventually established unidoges to conservation areas. And that helped, but these areas often overlapped with the lands that were the residential areas or at least the natural resources needed by the traditional communities. So this environmental colonization was based on the so-called myth of untouched nature prevalent among conservation groups then and even to some extent now. So this myth denies the everyday conservation by communities which were using the natural resources. So the FCT contested this policy, including that myth, and eventually gained a multi-actor shared management of the conservation areas, shared meaning among them, state bodies and civil society groups. Then they went on to develop agro forestry systems, which link nature conservation income from the products and the communities traditional ways of life. This all this was done through a partnership with civil society networks, especially coordinated by the observatory of the territory of Ivish, in South Ivish, observatory of sustainable and healthy communities of that territory, sorry, OTSS. For now on I'll just call it the observatory. So move on. They hosted events under the general theme agro ecology cultivating territories of being be there. This is the well-known Indian indigenous concept, which means something more profound and simply living well, about living in a harmonious way with nature and fellow humans. The FCT promoted the concept. socio environmental justice as a iteration of the well known concept already environmental justice. They developed a communitarian model which turned each place or site into a symbol of group identity and collective heritage. They developed a cooperative forms of organization, which extended a mutual age tradition known as mutirau or with the Irish and the formal explain more later. As a major problem. I mean there was an individualistic extraction of natural resources which degraded them. This strong group community bonds could better deter such behavior by offering alternatives more on that later. So move on. Next slide. For the agro forestry, they developed a community nursery for forest plants. And this in turn became a basis for distinctive food sometimes called non conventional food plants. These were eventually showcased by a new tourism of the basic military of community based tourism. This expanded short food supply chains for a solidarity economy by various means such as travel guides to attract tourists who really wanted to know more about these practices, restaurants and festivals. The TBC initiatives formed a network with the name. The Guarani concept, meaning we share our way of being with visitors. This shared experiences among various localities of the tradition of communities themselves in order to strengthen their own internal democracy, their income generation and resistance against the kind of threats I mentioned before. Next slide. And the FCT hosted a regional wide conference of all the initiatives in community based tourism. Next slide. It just illustrates this, the storytelling by the Grio, the wise elders, of course that's an African term still used in places such as Mali. Next slide. The demand was for an ethnically differentiated education in the state schools. And after several years of these demands, the partnership between the FCC and the observatory began to win such demands from the local authorities. Schools began a new curriculum emphasizing cultural identity, autonomy and belonging, this linked music, artisanal heritages, agri-food traditions and so on. And so strengthen capacities for territorial defense and alternative development pathways, especially now with the youth becoming a political cultural force. I mean there's a story to be told about each of the communities, but there won't be time. This will have to suffice. Next slide. Now, going back almost two decades, in the tradition of communities gained some victories during the 2003 to 16 governments that were led by the Partito, the artist, PTO workers party. But then in 2016, there was the judicial predata against President Dilma Rousseff. Right wing parties gained a majority in parliament. So subsequent governments have weakened the previous gains or even tried to abolish them. They've been more threats to the traditional communities, and thus protests have intensified. This is one example, the dominant agenda has sought to change the ecological zoning of the northern coast with Ral Nace, to permit new construction by real estate companies. So move on. Next slide. This shows you one of many protests. This has to be a Varani and a particular against the constitutional amendment, which would transfer the power more towards the federal government where the right wing parties had greater influence. The slogan says guarantee our future. Yeah, next slide. There's more on this concept. The FCT initiatives extend Mutirau. This is a widespread rural culture of mutual aid and reciprocity. It's originally a Tupi Guarani term, Mutirau signifies a joint or cooperative effort. Nowadays, the notes joint work in which all contribute and take terms for benefit and everyone. Mutirau facilitates closer interpersonal content, knowledge exchange, continue work activity, and sometimes love relationships. Mutirau has been maintained and extended through the music traditions. This will be illustrated by each community in turn. But before we go to which community, I'll just introduce some analytical concepts, which I'm calling counter hegemonic concepts in the next two slides. Given the various harms from the dominant development model, critics blame modern thought for its colonizing role. And then these concepts are surveyed in a book collection of articles edited by Gallo leads the observatory and not she meant to you saw before giving the speech at the FCT event. So a few of those concepts, in which they draw. So, one from one of the tourists who's a Santos colonial zones continue today in modern Western thought constituting the contemporary system of modernity. And then from now made a homogenizing colonialist attitudes historically erased that the cultural diversity is deleting them in classifications, which emphasized the subordination of the natives wild and illiterate who lack the erudite knowledge of the colonizer. And then Santos, I say times two, but there's Milton Santos, the geographer in Brazil, and then Bonaventura, this is a Santos, I think it's based here. He's the dominant world. And this is a critique of the dominant ideology of the state and even most development expert experts who promote so called rural territorial development. English translation. A concept which obscures these various conflicts about even the meaning of development, meaning of territory on behalf of a parent consensus as the objective to be achieved. They can't propose a territorial lives development, which promotes socioeconomic equity and autonomy for traditional cultures. So the second one move on to the next slide. And community is reconstituted by conserving and developing many cultural resources through reciprocity and mutual aid, traditional musical cultures emphasize everyone's participatory experience and social interactions. This contrasts with dominant musical roles, especially in the West as presentation or art for an audience. And I mentioned this concept because it is cited by some of the people who study these movements in Brazil. And then final point here from the French geographer as well, the collective center belonging depends on informal economies grounded in local social bonds. Such economies find a basis in places that generate composite cultures, social networks and belonging in specific groups, composite emphasizes perhaps a hybridization process between old and new, and among traditional cultures, which thereby create something new. So move on next slide. And the FCT in perfectly illustrates that concept. So, as I mentioned before, I mean the PT led governments and strengthen federal support for indigenous people. So we're looking here at the Guarani's, especially the NBA language group, who prevalent ones in this particular place. Since 2016, the right wing governments have attacked the earlier gains and the agencies who are responsible for providing those services or protections. So just as one example, perhaps the most important under federal law indigenous people's lands were protected and were meant to be formally demarcated. Specific boundary, yet the relevant agencies delay decisions about granting legal title, thus weakening the state protection from profit driven incursions. Next slide. In Brazil, generally, the NBA language group of indigenous Guarani have maintained their MBORI, which is a cultural forum, combining musical and dance. Traditionally, they call their youths, Honda Rally, Honda Ria, meaning male and female warriors. And originally it had a military meaning to resist the colonizers by force of arms. During the Portuguese Empire in Brazil, and then other threats more recently, nowadays has become a metaphor for conflicts with the state apparatus and colonizing agendas. This struggle needs different weapons than before, which are must you or a paper and legal arguments. And of course, dance, but also films of the sort that we've been seeing. The MBORI feature the Honda Rally dance, where the youths imagine they are seeking and reaching within marae and land with their evils, and they learn to be warriors. It simulates movements of three birds, whereby dancers acquire strength, brightness and agility. Move on to the next. Now here we'll see a film where they're always going to be singing in Guarani, but fortunately translations into Portuguese were provided. So in this case it's come all Guerreros e Guerreros to dance, sing and celebrate our house of worship, that our ancestors gave us the Guarani way of life, to live and be Guarani. So if you could move to one minute and a half on that film, the cursor. Just for half a minute would be enough. So that's a performance group of sorts, but it's a community initiative that tries to bring in everybody's participation. So move on next. Yeah, now here. So you'll see now just a few of numerous protests that have escalated in the last few years. So this was to defend FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation, which had performed important tasks in collaboration with indigenous groups all over the country. And then the Bolsonaro government proposed to transfer it to the agriculture ministry, which of course has always supported the agribusiness interest. So in the town of Ubatuba, they occupied the central square and intersection and thereby blocked all the traffic. Yeah, I'll just show you about a minute at this and here they're doing. Les, when the video is on, can you speak up a bit? I think you said can you move on to the next one? But I'm also hearing the video sounds like I can't hear you very well. Okay, I mean probably half a minute on each one to be enough just to get the basic idea. Sure. So just a second, let me go back to the presentation, share that. In the next protest, the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health. Well, that was now threatened with total abolition. So they escalated the protest. Now they occupied the intercity highway. Oh, sorry. I don't know what that is. Yeah, we can skip the film. I'll just explain that the women held an enormous banner across the highway, you know, blocking it to traffic and sang their songs. And meanwhile the men did the Hondura. And on the next slide, you'll see just a still photo. Yeah, I mean, you saw the dance in the previous film, but they're doing this dance in the middle of the highway and the federal police are trying to move the protest but have great difficulty doing so. Then of course this became national news because it's a major intercity highway. Now the final one from the Guarani. Now the government escalated its attack now on all the social services and pensions for everyone. And this is just one of many protests all over the country but with a local angle. So they sang, we have power when we are all together. We sing this music to be happy. I mean that's Guarani, but the filmmaker kindly sent me a translation. Is that an advert? I mean normally it would say. Can't skip those. Yeah, we'll have to edit it out this. Sadly someone is that gang? Let me try this one. Is that the one less? That's it. Yeah. Yeah, that's enough. Okay. And then you go back to the slide it explains in English. In fact on the on the right hand side you saw a photo of Bolsonaro Bolsonaro. So the placard said the indigenous people are here in Paraty. It's one of those these towns I showed you before from five villages. Demarcation now for indigenous land where I need people want indigenous help meaning. To serve ssi. Take your dirty hands off my retirement. What shame Paraty. You have flipped but not schools on the coast. Flip is the, the International Literary Festival, which of course is attended by the wealthy elites. So they were denouncing the local authority for using its funds to favor wealthy groups rather than to establish Guarani schools. So I think we're ready for the next group now, you know, bolus. So, during the Portuguese Empire, many slaves fled captivity went far away from the colonizers. They established communities and refugees which were called the lombos in remote forest areas know to avoid capture. Other descendants are called him bolus. In fact, they created the first democracy in Brazil, but that would be another story. The 1988 Constitution requires that the public authorities grant titles to all lands occupied by you know bolus, but this requirement has been hardly implemented as a rare exception. A settlement called the company near the independence here did gain land title in 99 afterwards they gained resources to create a community that development. Initially a shared management of conservation areas, and then community based tourism, no aiming to oppose the mass tourism that was dispossessing so many people so we move on to the next slide. And the restaurant is a showcase and a meeting point for that whole initiative. Community based tourism. Rotero and itinerary of the local agroforestry development and other sites of interest and this is just the photo I took when we visited there and the kitchen and the women's room. Well, the symbols images. And we just as a little sideline I was excited to see these tourist guidebooks of the sort I've never seen before, because they were excitedly told my colleagues from the NSP. And they said, Oh, of course, those are written by our PhD students. We come from these areas. And the jungle is a dance with a song which is called contico or Ponto song based on African forms as you would expect. That's where they were in slave. There was sung by the slaves in plantation work and later in neighborhood cooperation activities such as house building and harvest. Then the post harvest festival. We're going to include often Kaisara and kill on ball songs. The jungle plays many social roles in community relationships socialization of youth and prophecy, which also has implications for action so it's not merely waiting for better times. These are an autonomous collective authority of the color bullets. These are just examples from two different county cause I asked the Queen of the sea for leave to save our people. It is recognizing a higher force rather than any official authority. Another one at the edge of the sea I saw a warrior who played the bugle like his entire army, he fights for me. Moving on. Next slide. And through young go. You can involves seeing and discuss the reconquest of land and other freedom. That's written by a geographer. Use can maintain their identity, distant from the wounds the society is inflicted in the struggle for territory. In the last decade. Of course, rap has become popular among youth throughout the world, especially Brazil, but mainly in urban areas. This particular area and the client is unusual as a rural area that has also now developed its own form of rap, or by the roots make sense of their everyday experiences, lyrics highlight territorial conflicts, question the economic system denounce racism, praise the grills wisdom and honor the Columbus living culture. And this is an example from this area is group or really dodging a ground black reality. So we'll just see a half a minute of it. People sound perhaps similar to other. That was really. material out there. I'm just giving you a little taste of it. And you saw the women singing in the back I mean, women have a leading role or prominent role in all these activities. I believe more time to explain that. I mean, like the other groups to me their land is being further threatened by urbanization and certainly with state collusion that the federal level sometimes local level. So they pursue their territorial claims through court procedures and protests, and all this gives an extra political significance to both young go and rap. The next slide. So for several centuries, many of the early Portuguese immigrants lived on the coast, you know far from the centers of the Empire. They integrated their customs values and capacities with other coastal groups, including the one I need one I need. You know, especially for fishing, which has become almost a stereotypical image of the Assad ish using their canoes. The same kind of canoes that existed centuries ago. When sociologists described them as a marginal type of free peasant Fisher inside a slave society. And that traditional way of life, you know, continue after the end of slavery. And as I mentioned before, in the 1970s, then the Costa Kaysaris were marginalized by development is modernization. Luxury tourist resorts condominiums real estate speculation conservation areas. All these developments removed access to land that they are traditionally cultivated, and thus weakened the basis for Mutira. And of course, the potential income from tourism for both competition among the Kaysaris, thus undermining their communal relations and you'll see that in the songs lyrics that come later. And the musical culture is called fandango, which was adapted from Portuguese traditional dance, the quadril. Well known throughout Europe. And in the Caribbean. And it became associated more with Mutira in the Brazilian coastal context. And it meant that after a neighbor was helped with the harvest or house building he would host a celebration. No organized cooperatively. Mutira now continues, even after the celebrations have become detached from harvest, you know, given the weaker access to land for cultivation. There are many cultural initiatives such as projectos cemented Kaysaris means. The seeds, the metaphor, which organizes workshops where you learn how to play the music, and to make the main interest instrument the Rebecca small version of the guitar perhaps. Next slide. It's called a circuit. It's a circuit, a series of fandango cassara festivals. And you just see about a half a minute of this film to get a brief view of the dance and then matter of fact. The fandango encounters, it happens as a form of mutirão, right? Each place is organized within its reality in its own way, right? Looking for support and partnerships. You can't tell much about the public power, the government, not all the municipalities, not all parties have public support, so this is the most interesting. It's the form of how it resists through the mutirão, right? The English translation. It's because there was no municipality, there was no support, and we went, so everyone... Is that enough, Les? Yeah, yeah, now back to the slide so you can read in English what he was saying. See, ah, okay. Brief excerpts. Yeah, so this is just my paraphrase translation of his long commentary in the film. The fandango event is a form of mutirão, which is a form of resistance. Everyone helps the others. One person makes food, another helps to serve it, another brings a dishwasher, another puts up banners, the event ends up happening in this way. In the historical context of these people, doing the fandango reminds you of the solidaristic labor of a collectivity, where everyone participated, played and benefited. Most important is bringing people closer to each other through mutirão. Right, next slide. Now this communitarian culture has been undermined by commercial tourism and the individualistic plunder of forests. And both these appear in the lyrics of some songs. So this is Sardonic Song, describes a tourist hotspot from which the traditional people have been displaced. On Sad Wolf Street, where a shark lives, animal metaphor is for predation, and where tourists discover a paradise, yes, for them, but not for the people who were displaced. And another song laments the individualistic destruction of palm trees to extract the palm hearts and then illegally sell them. As the lyrics say, this purchase of palmito is worse than being a prisoner. Whoever cuts down the tree gains nothing that gains hard money. Those who buy the palmito and then sell it to companies make the money, it would be better to stop this trade. The main target of such plunder was the Juçada tree, which is crucial for forest biodiversity. Its fruit has many healthful benefits, so that provided an opportunity. In fact, you may know about the Assay fruit, which we have that name, which was already widely sold and consumed in cafes and supermarkets. The Juçada has even more healthful benefits than the Assay. So as a collective solution, the FCT initiated the project of Juçada. You can see how the harvest is done, the person climbing up that very tall tree on the left. So that's a skill in itself. But something more than that traditional skill was needed to create a new industry from the tree and protect the tree. So move on. Next slide. In 2012, the FCT established the project of Juçada to protect the standing tree, deter plunder, and to valorize the health benefits. So since then cooperatives have been selling the fruit pulp in shops. And to do that they got technical assistance from an agricultural unit of Embrapa, the Brazilian agriculture research agency, which mainly serves agribusiness but has some units which serve these kinds of initiatives. And the fruit could then be produced all year round on a much larger scale than would have been possible without that technical advice. So it's been generating income for the people who manage now in protected forests. And likewise income for businesses the process of the fruit product. So over, they popularize recipes for making various tasty products from the pulp is a whole recipe book, and they hold an annual Juçada festival bringing together the communities with their musical cultures. So next slide now and we move to the conclusion and three parts. So, to recapitulate the kind of sub region exemplifies many coastal areas where traditional communities face threats from development is modernization. It's been colonizing their everyday lives. For example degrading their natural resource space expanding real estate interests and shifting their production consumption patterns towards a profit driven economy. So community activities have redefined collective identities, more politically transforming tradition for solidaristic relationships in old and new forms. These strategies have drawn on counter hegemonic concepts from Brazilian writers who developed those concepts in engagement with the resistance of such groups. So these activities build a territorialized development, meaning that they aim to transform the motor production for greatest socio economic equity. Next, under the motto of Ducisa socio environmental environmental justice, the FCT has brought together the three traditional groups to join activities. To maintain their musical traditions, grounded in dance, the music lyrics have metaphorical ironic sardonic and lucid forms referring to the problems that they face and their aspirations for a better life. These traditions help to maintain and extend with you now, which has been traditionally central to their food systems. The FCT bonds have been mobilized to defend their state services natural resources and territory, likewise to create alternative development pathways based on agricultural agroforestry. In these ways, an ethno social diversity complements agribiodiversity as exemplified by the new Ducisa agroforestry culture. I mean that concept comes from another Latin American theorist in the left. So through our email exchanges between Andrew and Andrew Impey in the music department in the last couple weeks, somehow there emerged this concept, the colonial resistance consolation. So thanks to you both. This gives an extra twist on the motto of the FCT service to resist the inter community solidarity helps to counter the prevalent modernization and to create novel alternatives. Agroforestry ethnically differentiated education community based tourism public festivals and so on. In these ways musical and agro food cultures have been mobilized, gaining a new significance as a resource for alternative development. Diverse traditions converge into composite cultures, thereby deepening the social basis of territorial belonging. So I conclude there, except after the discussion we could have a song. That's on the final slide, but we can do that. So sorry, is this the final slide? Yes, except for the one with the song which we can save to laugh the discussion. Okay, well thank you so much for that, Les. I found that really fascinating and kind of mind blowing really enjoyed it, even though I was trying to juggle with the screens in the south and all the rest of it. So now let's kind of open it up to the to everyone I'll leave these slides in the background but what I'm, what I'd like to do is mainly gather questions that people actually say to Les you can also put them in a chat if you would like to. So in this game, I very much like to sort of have a physical conversation if you'd like, and what I'm suggesting by way of organizing that is that if people put their hands up they literally raise their hands in the, in the little little bottom bottom you can press which is raise hands. Is that there for you guys. I think there's a raise hand facility at the bottom. Because I was okay because I just not seeing on my screen so I was a bit worried about that. Okay, so if you can raise your hand that I can sort of basically organize the list of questions and, you know, just sort of do the first come first basis, because I think the share screen as well. Yeah okay I'll stop the share. Yeah, because we can always come back to that slide to the song. Okay, so. Right, so maybe I'll do that afterwards. So who would like to kick us off with a question for Les then. If you just put your hand up, I will see it in the list of participants and we can shoot to you. So we've got a question from Anna, if you'd like to come on and if you feel like turning your video on we'd love to see you as well. So much that was really interesting it's not an area I know much about so that was just fascinating and I'd like to, I was wondering if you could say a bit more about what the what the biggest challenges have been of working communicating across three different community groups. So sort of taking what's, you know the three different sort of cultures and three different traditions and, you know, forging something new that's kind of a three community identity in one. What what were the biggest struggles in doing that. So that's a crucial question for which I may not have a very strong answer because I haven't been at that interface, so to speak. I'm doing this from a distance. I'm dealing with the observatory and the fct and distance, no, especially. I should mention that we had an elaborate plan to do participatory action research with all those communities and in other parts other case studies in Brazil, we were all ready to go with that detailed plan of February. And then came the pandemic and we had to cancel all our plans. And now we're just trying to do as much as we can online. And I know when I've read, I mean a major problem was the one I mentioned before this. All these financial pressures and land pressures created a competitive mentality within each group, and even more so perhaps among the groups. So how to overcome competitive and even individualistic mentality. So all these alternatives development agendas and intercultural sharing that were means of overcoming that competitive mentality. So that I suppose especially around the concept resources and people think the resources are scarce but they're made scarce by the profit driven activities when people have a wealth of resources. Now this came up in one of the many webinars that either reorganized or the other groups organized with some of the speakers from the traditional communities saying we have all these resources available to us, especially in the nearby forests, or some of them live in the forest, how to make the most of those resources, rather than think of resources as something that depend on money becoming from somewhere else. Sure. So I have a similar question that Les, but I'm going to switch to one in the chat first, which is, so I have difficulty scrolling through the chatting poor Francois. I have a question for Les about religion what is the role of indigenous religion in mobilizing communities and resistance but also the role of perhaps Pentecostal groups in anti indigenous discourse. I mean, I've read a little ethnography about Guarani religion and all their songs refer to the house of worship, which has more communal meanings, perhaps then you might associate with worship as if they were a priest, a ceremony and reading the scripture, the worship is always a communal activity. So we could, the word, I mean it was in the song that I translated. They could give the wrong impression about what the religion needs. It's a better resemblance to Western institutionalized religions with all about asserting renewing communal bonds among the people so that everyone is included and it's made to feel that they belong to that community. I can't believe at that because I'm no expert. I'm now reading more about religion and what do they mean by the house of worship. The Pentecostal churches have been a big threat to all the progressive gains of the last several decades and they've been expanding substantially. Initially with finance from their supporters in Western countries, especially North America, you know, promoting the totally individualistic mentality, providing the idea of individual salvation through a combination of greed and future success through your own efforts. These churches have been proliferating all over the country, including in these traditional areas, and have attracted, I think, some people from Kielombo and Kaisara communities. I don't know to what extent, probably not from Barani, but it would be a little more difficult for them to totally fragment communal bonds. So yes, a serious threat. And I don't know what are the counter strategy so to speak, except to create these communal inter-community alternatives that would be more attractive to people as a collective identity and as a better future. I tend to ask another question there, Les, but I'm going to wait and let Mordi come in first. Mordi, what is your question? Hi. Thank you, Les, for that talk. That was very interesting. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, I know over the last few decades I've seen there's been a big push to protect and reforest the Mata Atilancica down the coast of Brazil in the crossing through the Bocaina region that we're talking about. And I wonder whether those two projects have mutually supported each other, whether the conservation project of the Mata Atilancica has contributed to helping this movement or vice versa. And secondly, whether there's any similar form of community mochiro elsewhere in the country, especially up in the northeast, where there's a much higher concentration of quilombolas and indigenous groups. Yes, I think that going back to the shared management initiative, I mean that demand then eventually created a turning point and reshaped the meaning of conservation, because it was going to mean that this myth of untouched nature were by the local farmer or people who even lived in the forest were seen as an inherent threat who had to be removed. So reforestation could have meant professional foresters and perhaps companies taking over and perhaps even for commercial gain is unclear. And certainly the management was being privatized. So then state bodies weren't even going to be politically publicly accountable for how it was done. And that was part of the overall privatization agenda. But the demand for shared management, including the traditional communities prevailed in some places, including this one, and that meant that the reforestation essentially involved them so that they could do the reforestation in a way that both conserve the resources and improve their incomes, and then eventually enhance their public visibility through community based tourism. I don't know to what extent that has prevailed in other analogous places in the country. Okay. All right, thank you. Good question. We've had another, just to come back quickly to the follow up from Paul Francois in relation to the issue about the Pentecostal churches, comparing two very different ontologies of transcendence, one a community of living dead and non-humans. I take it that's the kind of, you know, that the indigenous kind of one and then the one individualistic materialistic driven by the prosperity gospel. And a comment on that yes one new movement that's trying to bridge those communities is the Universal Church in Brazil seemingly drawing on tradition and including all beliefs including ancestors but not allowing drums and traditional music. Right. Okay. There's no asymmetrical power relations there in relation to what is drawn into syncretism, but just can I very quickly chip in here as well, Lez, I've done some research in Northwest Argentina right on the border with Bolivia indeed in a part of Argentina that used to be Bolivia and in a place where people didn't want to be Argentine and over time the word Boliviano has actually become a dirty word in some sort of context and there are all kinds of interesting identity questions and dynamics going on there. This is to pictures in one of the identities there is one of the groups that has survived with some level of sort of, you know, kind of continuity over time is the Chidi one or they're a very small group of people and they are in a protected area in a body to a national very tiny place called Libel and they don't talk much about publicly about that identity because there isn't the kind of space to celebrate still because the dominant identity even in the north of the northwest of Argentina which is ethnically very diverse. The dominant identity has been Grigio which has been which is descended from his Spanish and the Europeans who came over and there's slowly more room to peek out from this, but the Chidi one or people partly because of the repression they faced from the conservation authorities in the north of Argentina and the people like having their villages burned out their village burned down and huge, you know, types of, of, of intimidation which you have changed since they got a more humane kind of a park ranger who's in charge of the park now, but they also changed the entrance of the of the Pentecostal church and in some ways it's, it's, it is, you know, kind of strange and problematic and it does change a lot of, you know, the kind of, you know, the, the fabric of life for them you know there are there are festivals and rituals and, and communal events which are no longer kind of encouraged, but at the same time what the Pente, the arrival of Pentecostals has done is actually address the problem of alcoholism that was really rife in, in the, in the, you know, as well and and it's it raises that you know it's it's not all bad I guess is what I'm saying even though it's deeply problematic in the ways that the, you know, the, the questions in our chat have sort of brought up. But I'm wondering how, how you see that in the, well, let me say here's my question for you, Les. Going back to Anna's question at the start of how these groups actually get on. Is there a sense in which one of these identities identity group takes itself to be in a, you know, top of the kind of the power hierarchy so to speak and things like that which have to be negotiated in the way of say, the career show, chili one or and Bolivian or and get your identities that you find in in Northwest Argentina where, like the people who fight see themselves as career show even though they're definitely much more mixed than that and that word and that characterization would lead you to believe they are at the top of a pecking order, albeit you know they're all kind of subalternate some level, but how do those kind of dynamics work out between these three groups. Well, from what I know, I mean, none of them were privileged by the dominant system. None of them had the prospect of being incorporated in some kind of power relationship with the other was more like a rivalry for resources and access to land among them or even within them. And then each one. That's my understanding. So, perhaps it may not be analogous to some other places where there is that neocolonial strategy to use one group against another. That's just from what little I know at this stage. I think the perhaps that's why it was more feasible in such a place to create bonds among them by sharing their cultures, which are both cultures of community and the resistance in the context that describe that's just my intuition that would be much more a place where one group is being instrumentalized against the others or made to feel superior. Sure. Yeah, it's a different context in some ways but I'm guessing that yeah it can't be easy to manage the differences as well as the similarities between those groups. Um, okay, so do we. So we have one more quest comments about. Oh, sorry, we've had that one. And so is there another question here looks like that might be how have the dynamic shifted since 2016 what pressures have the right wing government introduced and has this changed the strategies or practices of the FCT. There've been more and more threats, even to the existence of some federal agencies. And that applies to say all small scale producers, like abolishing a whole ministry that had been promoting policies and support measures for small scale, especially agree the logical producers. So, from what I know, they've had to support resistance and support for that resistance among all the communities and beyond the traditional communities in order to prevail. And at the same time, that's there are more opportunities for such broader support because whole social sectors have been fighting against those right wing governments on several fronts at once. And I suppose, in a sense, when they launched the campaign in 2014 I mean that was still under the PT government. That set the ground set a stronger basis for the even greater difficulties that were to come after 2016. There are now many details such as a broad range of organizations that supported that campaign from the start, and now even broader range, and that sometimes join in the protests. The point is that with less of the state support measures available, or even state attacks, they become more dependent on their own resources in the broad sense to make the most of their own collective capacities and to use the natural resources to which they have access. In particular, the observatory is a project funded by the health ministry at the federal level, and somehow has been protected from these drastic cuts or even abolition of many programs which have been supporting these initiatives. And that has made an important difference. That's behind the scenes and necessary to protect that program. Yeah, I mean all these questions I would like to investigate more have to do that by online means. The pandemic seems to be getting worse. And do you have a sense of that less of the ways in which you know there's been there has been coverage hasn't there about in the news about the Bolsonaro government has seemingly kind of deliberately not really helped indigenous communities across Brazil. Have you have you seen any of the repercussions of that in relation to these three communities. Yes, I mean, at one level, of course, everybody has been suffering unnecessarily, because the federal government didn't do what they should have done as you might say the same thing here and then the USA in particular, alongside the increasing attacks on the progressive gains of the PT government. For this particular area that were kind of the communities themselves decided is when they saw the dangerous signs. They would just close off access their specific areas where they live. That meant stopping the tourism. Stopping any trade and instead relying on donations of food beyond what they could produce themselves that was coordinated partly by the observatory. And then to increase exchanges among those traditional communities. If they have surplus of fish in one place or surplus of maize in another place, then they do swaps. And so they've increased their solid heuristic activity among themselves. So that's stopping pretty much all commerce in the financial sense to to ensure that the virus doesn't reach them. Yeah. And are they having maybe you don't know this but are they having discussions I don't know whether what the vaccination program is looking like in Brazil right now are the discussions. Is there a trust kind of question around around, you know, whether to have the vaccine about the sort of relations it brings them into with the state authorities is there a mobilization which is looking to get vaccines I mean, I don't know maybe it's a bit too early to ask these questions I mean, there it's called negation is more like denial is nearest English word and of course that's a global phenomenon. And much more widespread than I would have imagined in places that I wouldn't imagine. But as far as I know in those particular communities, they have the opposite problem that they want it. It's not easy to get the reasons conflicts within the government over whether whether vaccines are needed at all. That's another whole story. Whether this really is a fatal disease. The health ministry and some state governments wanting to promote the vaccine but in conflict with the federal government. That would be a different talk, but as far as I know these communities know that they need it. Yeah, yeah, that sounds. That sounds very tough. And so I could ask loads more questions I won't because I like to do two things one is I'd like to leave a chance for any final questions anyone might have. So are there any other questions that we want to ask speak now or forever hold your peace. And we could finish with a song. Well that's what I was hoping for as well. So if we go back to the final slide, which gives you the link. Yeah, there's a little description of the songwriter when the link to the bilingual lyrics. Sure. So just before you go everyone I know some people are dropping out because they need to go to lectures or whatever. We're going to try and let me go back to the presentation and I'll try and find a link in the final slide did you say. Yeah. Okay just a second. I need to get the stuff off my screen so I can see what I'm doing. So, hang on. I thought this was the final. Oh yeah sorry you said there's one here okay. All right. It's the song of three races, written by Paolo Cesar Pinheiro, who has white native and African ancestry all three races. Right. And he says the song was born out of the interbreeding of the three races from the strong nostalgia of the white colonizer. And the fatal fear the black man felt by being away from his land and from the native land suffering. And this gives you both languages. But the chorus is fairly simple melody without words. So you should be able to follow it fairly easy but remember turn off your microphones because the internet has a time delay, which prevents simultaneous or synchronized music making from different computers regardless of where they are. So if you move back to the, no we're going to sing it. I mean I'm going to sing it and you can. Join in. Okay so am I putting the lyrics on the screen then Les is that what you want the lyrics as they are sure right. So I'll start with the chorus, which then comes up another two times. Okay. And then just try it with muted everybody. And then just try it with muted everybody. Oh Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey canto do brazil un lamento triste se pregoa neste que un diaguero forchitivero e de la canto negro entro un canto de revolto e los ares no que lombos dos pares onde se refugio fora luto desconfidentes pina quebra descorrentes nadio ante yo e de cuero un paz un paz paz anguera todo pozo desatero cuante pote cantar cantar de dor brilliant thank you very much les i was humming along there but i thought we were supposed to be on mute so i changed to myself but i was humming along there and that was very interesting and i love the fact that we finished with a song we never finished anything with and that was as if it was just the most natural thing that we could ever do and i'm all for that gotta think about how i might get a bit of that into some of my lectures thank you very much lads it's been really uh really insightful to to learn about the fct and its efforts to bring communities together under the banner of but it is a very it is easy to um to to conserve is to to resist even in these difficult times although of course you know historically i imagine these groups might not see these times as difficult as some of the other ones that they've lived through so um but thank you so much for that it's really uh been uh hugely uh rewarding we've got lots of people saying thank you so much was very interesting for the presentation for the song amazing beautiful singing thank you so much um thank you thank you thank you so i think we've got a very appreciative audience les um we've got all of this recorded as well so i will put it out there um in some way shape or form either via links or i might try and get this on to the sas youtube channel if that's okay with you les yes if you can possibly remove those bits of films that weren't meant to be if it's possible i'll see what i can do les i don't know i don't know if you can i don't know how to edit um the uh what do you call it the the video itself but i'll see what i can do see one of our technical people can do that but thank you very much les thank you everyone for coming um i think we'll call it a day there and keep within our sort of a lot of time um and as i say uh i'll post the recording so that anyone who wants to revisit any of of this or you know use as notes whatever we'll be able to see it um enjoy the rest of your days and hopefully you can go um singing and thinking uh about the uh the the gando that's treasure assets all right thanks to everybody thanks very much guys