# Transformance between the Rivers Tocantins and Itacaiúnas **by Dan Baron** After 10 years of collaborations with the MST (Landless Workers), Trades Union and indigenous movements, and the Pará State Federal University (UFPA), in Brasil, performance educators and eco-cultural activists Dan Baron and his co-founder of the Community University of the Rivers, Manoela Souza, were invited to create a community sculpture in the Afro-Indigenous village of Cabelo Seco in 2008, an arrow of land where the River Tocantins and River Itacaiúnas meet. The Rivers of Meeting project began by awakening sleeping cultural roots and voicing a keen defense of human rights through Afro-Contemporary percussion, dance and lyrics workshops. Over 12 years, excluded youth were nurtured to become community workshop leaders and coordinators of medicinal plant gardens, street library/cinema projects, dance and audiovisual companies, annual festivals and workshop courses in their Community University of the Rivers, to defend the River Tocantins and River Itacaiúnas to nurture an eco-village based on pedagogies for sustainable community. This young AfroRaiz Collective became the community 'sculpture'. Rivers of Meeting is now transforming itself into a Good Living educational and therapeutic program for all. The most coherent way for the author to distill the Transformance community-based eco-pedagogy and to show how they are performed inside the intimate contradictions where they are embraced and emerge, is through 8 narrative poems the author has selected. For reference, please refer to the video recording to access a detailed audio-visual presentation and reflection. [[https://youtu.be/9vIQc91Qegg]] {{:newsletters:08:4_festival_beleza_amazônica_2013.jpg?400|}} ## Carnaval 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 açaí, 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! {{:newsletters:08:10_consciencia_negra_2014.jpg?400|}} ## library every Saturday I go to the centre enter a circle hear stories play with colours and without threat sing dancing opening myself with care to read and recognize my stories and at sunset right there I pick up a pencil which does not judge me or cut me or fell my calm and I invent without fear the first comic-book with afro-amazonian leaves of life {{:newsletters:08:11_energias_da_vida_nov_2014_.jpg?400|}} ## literacies I create a kite and see your care, mum in my hands cutting and sowing my clothes. I knot the ribbons of its tail and see your wisdom, dad in the dance of your fingers weaving nets in the shade of the square. I fly my dreams their cord vibrating with so much history and desire and though mute failed and condemned I read the future in the winds and write the ethics of the rivers on the parched red sky to reveal the values of the giants and keep safe my life in my home. {{:newsletters:08:0_capa_advocacia_.jpg?400|}} ## Rivers of Meeting Stop, my brother, give-up that screen in your palm retrieve the creative time of your imagination. Now leap, and stand by my side on the steel horizon where everything began. Can you see, through the fumes the indistinct contours of the River Tocantins? See the boardwalk blurred by frenetic clouds of crazed dengue mosquitos reproducing in the fetid drains? Now, fly, above the cement dam camouflaged by murals and premiered graffiti and see Cabelo Seco, before its ’revitalization'. See the Backyard Drums singing their alert on the tilted stage of the little blue house? And there, AfroMundi, beneath the trees in the little square dancing a river-source on fire? Now see Leaves of Life, its portable library passing from house to house, cultivating reading? And there, a little plaza of children beneath the stars mouth agape in front of the homemade screen of Owl Cine See "it’s coming! Radio Stingray… " announcing the great bike-ride 'Let Our River Pass'? And Rabetas Videos filming a gathering of families their hair braided with the rays of the sun? Now, beside the school, our well of pure water can you make-out a wee girl, so thin huge Afro, looking at us, filling plastic bottles? Recognize her? Look carefully! It’s me! Yes, your gran dancer, reader and singer in the university of the rivers! I cycled with my mum, our hair in flames! I set up the cinema, even won a book in the raffle on the last Saturday before that dawn when we left with a multitude of people. We knew we were exchanging açaí, jambú and Paraense rice festivals for clean, air-conditioned dreams from overseas… But we never imagined the tension of that endless boredom fenced by fear, in our new habitat. Kissing on the river in Belém, we saw the ships, yes but I never realized, they were actually mining the future! See that guy, staring at the immense desert looking at me from the horizon? Till today his questions echo in the craters of my stolen imaginary. Who is responsible for such devastation? How will we survive such violence? What project invites a community to gaze at its revival in a museum where everything ended? Leap now to 2015, my brother, to the world stage of that beautiful little square! Gather all the youth and children of the community and tell them all you have seen, at my side! Tell them Brazil will produce solar energy so cheap that there’ll be no more argument for hydroelectric dams! Go, invite youth from projects around the world that have already lived green lies to meet between the Tocantins and Itacaiúnas Rivers and together, create a solidarity and generosity that fit in the palm of every hand! {{:newsletters:08:18_festival_beleza_amazonica_2014.jpg?400|}} ## let our river pass even though there are no more fish I will hold on to my grandpa's canoe its taúba benches preserve the curve of my learning in his lap of how to read the rivers the smell of tucunaré drying on the clothes-line in our backyard and mum’s peels of laughter discovering my first love of summer that world sustains the roots of my hope that the murder of river-sources in the name of green progress will open your nut-brown eyes encourage you to pick-up the propeller and cross the tocantins, again at sunset, with me to defend our amazon {{:newsletters:08:14_forum_bem_viver_2017.jpg?400|}} ## Letter from Mariana My dear Marabá, Amazonian kin greetings from Mariana your miner-sister still trembling beneath the mud. I write against time within a labyrinth of shame without light to disturb and encourage you... Sister, even sensing it was a lie I let green promises seduce me to become human and end once and for all my fear of hunger. I won a home and became so consumed by the dreams in the palm of my hand I spent the future bit by bit, not noticing... Friend, read the debris of my naivety mocking my dry scream. Learn from me, my cousin the toxic cost of saying 'yes' when you think 'no'. Don't even hide behind the law of silence that today shelters so many giants... Marabá, when their ships pass fat with so much iron, beef and wood your chance will have already passed! You will only have time to take one last selfie in front of a boat rushing towards the source of the Tocantins in flames! Sister, preserve the Lourenção Boulders wise beings that will protect you from the ships of death and guide the rains of dawn. If together we declare "not here, Vale!" we can free ourselves of this poison and take care of our Amazonian good life! {{:newsletters:08:28a_festival_beleza_amazônica_2016.jpg?400|}} ## Good living Every dawn, nets emerged from your needle a precise white pen weaving living wisdom into a web of concern. Even well-made, fish always escaped transforming our boats into flowing feasts! And suddenly, the sun forgot to rise, I swear! In the darkness, we breathed so much ash Marabá got sick, became blind, lost its voice and our canoes returned hungry. The dust settled, but nothing was ever the same. Today, in the mall, I saw my dad's extinct canoe beautifying the billboard 'Marabá, the Future'. Our River Tocantins, traded for mandates has become a favor in an aluminium dream. I feel betrayed, shaken by the cheering crowd! I search for any memory that can illuminate this blackout that threatens the world's future. I've already lost years scrolling post after post to relieve me of the hunger that addicts me to the consuming of my own imagination! I walk tense, impatient, ashamed, confused! Take my portrait, kid, right here in front of my river an old woman requests, cidreira leaves in her hand. My granddaughter wants to link me to the Maori who heal their rivers on the other side of the world! The kindness of this sage frees me from my solitude and suddenly, drums re-skinned with love by youth already creating a network of good life begin a beat so synchronized my pulse quickens and my humanity flows! {{:newsletters:08:20_dia_da_criança_2018.jpg?400|}} ## good living amazon when our canoes return famished we turn our hunger into dance when our forests are turned to dust we transform our asthma into song so that when the ‘green’ giants command us to cleanse our rivers of their toxic greed marabá will already be reviving because in the healing of every scar we learn the art of caring in the silence of every favour we learn the courage to dare and in the leap of every child a flying river of resilience is born ---- **About Author** **Dan Baron Cohen** is a community performance educator and eco-cultural activist of Welsh-Quebecois origin, living in the Brazilian Amazonian city of Marabá. . [[http://www.riosdeencontro.wordpress.com|Website]]. YouTube channel: [[https://www.youtube.com/user/riosdeencontro|Rios de Encontro]]