TAPAJÓS ON SCREEN
With cameras and cell phones, young people from Tapajós highlight the impacts of climate change on their territories and gain visibility in national and international awards
This article was originally published in the 1st edition of the Voices for Just Climate Action Magazine in June 2023. Read the full magazine here.
The appropriation of technological means and audiovisual language by traditional populations has brought an original look at climate issues and given young activists from the Tapajós the power to speak out, helping the Amazon to be shown by the region’s inhabitants themselves. With the protagonism of these groups, the productions made it possible to create new languages and aesthetics to address the issue by those who should be at the center of the discussion.
The videos made began to gain attention and even win awards, such as the short film Autodemarcação Munduruku, which tells the story of the Tupinambá people’s struggle to protect their territory, and which was shown and honored at the Brasilia Film Festival; the video Grito Ancestral, which tells the story of the Tupinambá people’s struggle to protect the Tapajós River and its forest; the experience of managing native bees in the Amazon; and the management of pirarucu as a climate solution. The last three were awarded prizes in the 27na27 competition, promoted by the VAC Program for COP 27.
Through workshops and support for the qualification of audiovisual productions that have been experimented with by collectives made up of young people from indigenous and riverside communities, the Vozes do Tapajós Coalition has been highlighting the narratives of Amazonian populations on climate change.
Award-winning movements strengthened by climate change debates
By incorporating the debate on climate change into their agendas, six community-based organizations representing traditional and indigenous populations in the Tapajós River basin region were strengthened in 2022. Traditional and ancestral knowledge combined with technical and scientific knowledge has enabled local populations to gain a significant insight into the serious threats to which their territories are subjected.
Collectives and movements have increased their mobilization and engagement in defense of socio-environmental solutions to overcome the climate crisis by connecting local and global knowledge, realizing that the main people affected by the climate crisis are the traditional territories that depend on the forest for their survival.
Although the Amazon is at the center of the global debate on overcoming the climate crisis, this debate sometimes excludes local actors from the fight for environmental conservation, such as indigenous people, riverine communities, extractivists and family farmers, among others. In this sense, the inclusion of the climate crisis agenda in the debates of the social movements of the riverside communities in the Tapajós region has allowed us to understand the leading role that these movements have in this struggle, through a shared agenda based on the demands of the Amazonian communities.
This is the aim of the Tapajós Voices Coalition, made up of the Health and Happiness Project, SAPOPEMA, the Tapajós-Arapiuns Indigenous Council – CITA, the Santarém Rural Workers’ Union – STTR, the Tupinambá Indigenous Council – CITUPI, Associação Suraras do Tapajós and Coletivo Audiovisual Daje Kapap Eypi Munduruku, which has been promoting mobilizations in the territories, activism actions focused on the climate agenda and training events with leaders of grassroots movements and organizations, as well as training, thematic guidance and funding for the production of the videos.
Voices for Just Climate Action Magazine is a publication collectively produced by the VCA Brazil Regional Team and the organizations supported by the program in the country. Read the full magazine here.
