Other Events

The origin of fire and the possibility of controlling fire in land clearing

We will be listening to José Carlos Almeida Cruz, Piratapuia, Indigenous Anthropologist, PhD student at PPGAS Manaus and Visiting Researcher at ICS-Ulisboa and the EDGES project, who will talk to us about “the origin of fire and the possibility of controlling fire in slash-and-burn agriculture.” From his perspective, based on what the UFAM (Manaus) Indigenous Student Group has called “indigenous reflexivity,” anthropologist José Carlos Cruz, himself a Piratapuia, will reflect on the intervention of certain animals in the origin of fire and the ways in which the Tukano groups in the Amazon—one of the most important groups and preserved regions of the Brazilian Amazon—control fire.

The discussion group brought together members of the European project EDGES: Entangling Indigenous Knowledges in Universities and the project ABIDE: Animal Abidings: recovering from disasters in more-than-human communities (ID 101043231), funded by the @ERC – European Research Council, including principal investigators Susana Viegas (EDGES) and Verónica Policarpo (ABIDE); disaster risk specialist, including fire, geographer José Luís Zêzere; as well as other members of the two projects, where the issue of fire and animals intertwines. The proposal is to informally weave ideas from those that will be suggested to us in the presentation by indigenous anthropologist José Carlos Cruz.