Read more about each of the 5 Healings: ancestral and traditional practices for healing thoughts, feelings, relationships, and more, shared by Indigenous peoples.
Collaborate as a way of expressing gratitude for the knowledge shared by Indigenous peoples and demonstrate our collective responsibility.
introduction
download
booklet T5C english version
​
coming soon
The research upon which this book is based started in 2017, with the aim of inquiring deeper into a decolonial orientation towards social innovation, with focus on the expansion of references and commitments with global justice. For this project, the decolonial orientation was defined as fundamentally concerned with challenging narrow ideas of common good, rethinking traditional flows of knowledge production, resisting paternalistic notions of progress and development and cultivating an appreciation for ecologies of knowledge while holding/honoring the gifts and limits of multiple onto-epistemic traditions.
The research agenda and network were consolidated at a gathering in May of 2020 at Pitaguary people’s Monguba village, in the city of Pacatuba, Ceara, northeast of the territory known as Brazil, tittled “Un-tying the knot of the illusionary separation between human and nature: unravelling the chain of responsibility”.
The Web of Five Healing Processes (T5C) received this name through an Indigenous lens from the participants in the gathering, where they ascribe the current global poly-crisis to a series of diseases caused by violent relationships between human and non-humans, and with the Earth Metabolism, entity that we are all part of, and that is referred as a generous mother, Mother Earth (Mãe-Terra).
Following the initial gathering, two subsequent meetings/ceremonies with the whole network took place in October 2019 and March 2020. Besides those, T5C researchers experienced many other opportunities to exchange knowledge and experiences between each other and broader audiences. Examples of those are events that Indigenous people from Brazil took part at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and the participation of people from the network at the ceremony of Muricy and Batiputã, that takes place yearly at Aldeia São Jose, from the Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú people. Because of Covid-19 pandemic, many other activities took place online and important parts of this research were synthesized through exchange of extensive telephone audios between the participants of the network.
T5C reunited again in person during the struggle against a court case in Brazil that would represent a major downturn for Indigenous people rights towards their lands, called Marco Temporal.
Furthermore, this book also credits ancestral knowledge and its ability to resist many forms of violence and continue to be transmitted through the relationship with the land, chants, prayers, ceremonies, elders and through listening to non-humans such as plants, rivers, dunes, forest and animals.
Amongst the paradoxes that we hold through this booklet is the amount that is lost through the cultural translation in order to make the content inteligible to a colonial grammar. This research project has been funded by, and is partly directed to non-Indigenous audiences and institutions, such as the University, who operate under hegemonic ways of knowing and being. With this we refer specifically to the significant gap between what the terms ‘ceremony’, ‘medicine’, 'chants', 'ancestors', and 'relational work' might mean to the Indigenous researchers and the intended readers.
This research endeavor entails navigating the complex contradiction of addressing modernity's diseases by employing one of its central tools, all while residing within the realm of both generative and potentially harmful outcomes, within the context of translations that may to a similar extent be meaningful and unintelligible. We are aware that this is both an indispensable and insufficient strategy.
Despite pointing out some pathways to re-calibrate our relationship with the Earth metabolism, this booklet brings above all a critical perspective towards modernity's hegemonic ways of being and its pernicious effects to most human and non human lives. This is why we chose to establish here a dialogue between the wisdom shared by T5C knowledge keepers with pedagogical tools developed by GTDF collective. The cartographies offered here serve as an introduction to each chapter and aim to avoid common traps of the encounter between ways of knowing with distinct ethical and relational principles, and in different positions of power.
They can support readers to map, articulate and establish a different relationship with modernity "disease", but do not propose any "healing", nor any universal, large scale treatment.
Finally, it is important to point out that the healing processes shared here by the Indigenous communities that are part of T5C network demands a constant practice of attunement with the land, and with visible and invisible beings (the enchanted ones). They are not to be approached as something to be done once, consumed and then discarded. This is a reminder that the way we relate to these wisdoms is always at risk of reproducing violent modern patterns of behavior, and it is our responsibility to avoid repeating those mistakes.
One tool that can support us in identifying these patterns is called "HEADS UP", that maps seven patterns of harmful engagement with different knowledge. These are:
Hegemonic practices (reinforcing and justifying the status quo);
Ethnocentric projections (presenting one view as universal and superior);
Ahistorical thinking (forgetting the role of historical legacies and complicities in shaping current problems);
Depoliticized orientations (disregarding the impacts of power inequalities and delegitimizing dissent);
Self-serving motivations (invested in self-congratulatory heroism);
Un-complicated solutions (offering ‘feel-good’ quick fixes that do not address root causes of problems);
Paternalistic investments (seeking a ‘thank you’ from those who have been ‘helped’)
If you are reading this text and are not part of groups that are/have been historically and systematically oppressed, having their rights and territories violated, we recommend that you revisit this acronym constantly and check if/when those patterns emerge. When this happens, be extra careful with your thoughts, reflections and actions
