Performing Transformation: Cultivating a Paradigm of Education for Cooperation and Sustainability in a Brazilian Community

Abstract

The afternoon before Black Awareness Week 2013, in the Afro-Indigenous community of Cabelo Seco (Dry Hair), Camila comes to our window. Mikael, you know, Eliza’s four year-old brother, has died. We are stunned. What happened? Camila, one of our teenage teachers, Afro-contemporary costumes piled high in her arms, shrugs and disappears. We cancel her dance classes and all our courses. I text Eliza, one of our percussionists. What happened? She replies in seconds. He died with a bloated belly. He went for surgery and didn’t resist death. I’ll text after I feed the baby.

So much partying, I almost didn’t notice the future already happening right there, love, in front of us enclosing our homes and videoing our squares but love, when I heard the giants in the voices of our dancing bulls playing our tambourines stained with acai, the penny dropped! They’re rooting themselves in our culture and mining our dreams to industrialize and steal the Amazon! Let’s rescue the future, love and throw the spear for the River Tocantins!