NUTRINDO AS RAÍZES 2003
The Tracking Project's Brasilian Mentor Program

LAST January we returned to the cerrado region of central Brasil, following the tracks of the onça (jaguar) as they led us into the first year of Nutrindo as Raízes, our Brasilian mentor program. There on an expansive farm surrounded by emas, quiexadas (white-lipped peccary), araras (macaws), gavióes (hawks), antas (tapirs), capybaras and hundreds of species of cerrado vegetation, we joined 40 Brasilian educators, artists, tribal leaders and community workers for a week of discussions, teachings and ceremonies that carried our Arts of Life mentor curriculum to a new level of achievement.

The participants came from many different regions of Brasil and included psychologists, biologists, public servants and architects, journalists, history professors and professors of circus arts. The Indian people of this vast land were represented by two young women from the Bakairi people (Mato Grosso region) and a young cacique from the Yawanawá tribe (near Tarauac in the state of Acre).

The team from North America included: our elder, Andy Buster (Miccosukee tribal judge/substance abuse counselor); Able West and Solar Law; Renate Cassis Law, our translator for the course; a member of the Aurora Foundation; and John Stokes.

Our visit was coordinated by the members of Projeto Pegadas Brasil (PPB), the Brasilian branch of The Tracking Project. The staff of PPB is dedicated to "harmonizing the human being with Nature, inspiring the conservation of life on Earth" through traditional tracking skills, the revitalization of ancestral cultures and the Arts of Life. Members include: Bento Viana, Edison Lu¡s Guedes Neves, Henrique, Flavia, Carla, Renata, Vinicius, Samir, and Joáo Gabriel, together with many advisors and friends.

History of Our Work in Brasil

Our work in Brasil-from the creation of PPB to our annual trainings for Brasilian youth, additional trainings for Brasilians in the US and the mentor program—has followed a strategic plan developed through the collective vision of the Aurora Foundation, The Tracking Project and the members of Projeto Pegadas Brasil. The story of how this all came to be is worth relating.

Projeto Pegadas Brasil is one of the flowers from the original mentor program Nurturing the Roots. Bento Viana attended the first year of our mentor program in New Mexico in 1996. As a visual artist who shared the vision of training young people to care for the earth, he sought and received permission to establish the work of The Tracking Project in Brasil, agreeing to follow our project's methodology, goals and objectives. Together with Edison Luís Guedes Neves, Solar Law and others, Bento set up an office in Bras¡lia and began to work with young people.

In 1998 we were invited to courses in Brasil. The first year, we held a tracking class in the Chapada dos Veiadeiros north of Bras¡lia. In 1999 we established a second group of rastreadores with a course on the northeast coast near Fortaleza, and held a second course in Bras¡lia. In 2000 we returned to Fortaleza and Bras¡lia. In 2001, we added a new region with a course in the Serra de Cantareira outside of Sáo Paulo. That same year, we streamed our teachings by bringing in a new group of beginning students for the Bras¡lia course, while holding a leadership seminar for the advanced students there.

Fernando Yawanawá getting fire with a bowdrill kit

In 2002, we met the challenge of trying to return to each of these sites each year by visiting Brasil twice. The first visit we worked in the Pantanal region near Cuiabá and held a longer leadership camp for the advanced students in Bras¡lia. Returning in October, we visited Sáo Paulo for a second year and took our second group of trainees in Bras¡lia into their second year.

We have now worked with more than 400 participants from all over the country—Alta Floresta, Manaus, Campo Grande, Florianopolis, Rio de Janeiro, Cuiab and other regions—who have taken part in these camps. Thousands more have been touched by the classes run throughout the year by the staff of PPB.

The success of our work in Brasil has been assured by the efforts of PPB, whose tireless travels and remarkable stories about our work have generated a waiting list of young people anxious to experience the "legendary" Tracking Project. PPB (whose new website can be found at www.projetopegadasbrasil.org.br or through our website's Links) maintains a full schedule of courses in Brasil and hosts our annual visits.

Major funding for the start-up of Projeto Pegadas Brasil and for our visits throughout these six years has been provided through the generosity and vision of the Aurora Foundation. In Brasil, further assistance has been provided by O Fundaçao Boticário, the AVINA Foundation and The Nature Conservancy do Brasil, as well as other organizations.

Some Highlights

It is impossible to describe the richness of each day during the training, but our silent hike into the enclosure with the herd of quiexada was certainly memorable, as were the torrential rains and the quality of the performances we enjoyed each evening. Toward the end of the week, we all took part in a powerful water ceremony, joining the waters which we had gathered from all over the world during NTR with the waters from all over Brasil which the participants had brought. We poured some of this revitalized water into the lagoon at Fazenda Trijun‡ao, for these waters flow into the Rio San Francisco, a major waterway for eastern Brasil.

A gift to all was the participation of local mentor and tribal leader Fernando Yawanawá , a solid young Indian man who we learned was the cacique of some 700 people who live in the rainforest in the headwaters of the Amazon. Each day, Fernando shared some new teachings from his people's culture. Many of his people's stories were similar to the Miccosukee teachings of Andy's people in the Everglades. We also found connections between some of his peacemaking stories and the story of The Great Peacemaker of the Iroquois.

Fernando was especially interested in our daily dream circle. After the first morning, he asked if he might lead-off each dream circle. "As I've mentioned before," he would say each day, "my people place a great significance on dreams. I dream every night. This is the dream I had last night." We learned that his people awake each day at three a.m. to meet and share their dreams with the tribal pajé‚ before going to their fields or out hunting at first light. He told us many stories of the onça and taught us that of all the jungle animals, the onça has the most peaceful spirit.

Fernando and other leaders in his area are working to lead their people back to their own language, culture and beliefs. One thing they have done is to ban all instruction in Portuguese in his village. All teaching must be done in Yawanawá. Fernando told us he had taken the course to become the first professor of his own tribal language to set a good example.

He found the mentor program to be helpful in this process of cultural renewal. Each day he would carefully explain to me which aspects of our curriculum he found useful and which he didn't really need. The Thanksgiving Address was something he really liked and he asked if he might translate the words into his language. The workout was not something he needed, because he said all of his people are quite fit. He liked the idea of traditional games which we had brought from our friends on the island of Moloka'i (Hawai'i) and thought that these kind of games could keep some of his young men from straying. Near the end of the gathering, Fernando told the group: "I hope you guys appreciate what they have put together here. A week in this project is like two years in a university."

We felt the same way about our short time with Fernando and we hope he and all the other participants from this first gathering will join us for the second year of the program.

The Tracks that Unite Us

In many ways, we literally followed the tracks of the onça from New Mexico to the the center of the South American continent. The books tell us that prior to the twentieth century, the traditional range of the jaguar (Panthera onça) extended from Santa Fe, New Mexico west into Arizona and south through Central America to the central regions of Brasil. But since the early 1900's sightings in the US have been minimal. On March 7, 1996 rancher/hunter Warner Glenn spotted and photographed a jaguar in the Peloncillos mountains which follow the Arizona/New Mexico state line. He published the story of this sighting and the photos in Eyes of Fire: Encounter with a Borderlands Jaguar. Since this time, jaguar sightings have continued.

Evening Arts of Life presentations by the participants

When our friends in Bras¡lia were searching for a site for the mentor program, they found a potential venue at Fazendas Trijunçao located at the borders of three states—Goiás, Bahia and Minas Gerais. In one of the rooms at the farm, they saw a beautiful picture of a jaguar on a rocky promontory. When they asked where in Brasil the picture had been taken, the owner of the farm told them, "That photo was taken in Arizona by a good friend of mine named Warner Glenn." They knew they had come to the right place.

How remarkable that we can fly for the better part of a day from North America down into the Southern hemisphere, drive for several hours out into the bush . and find the tracks of the same animals that we track here in the high desert regions of the Southwest. The mountain lion, the deer, the skunk, the fox, the rattlesnake, the rabbit, even the coati. We have come to think of these tracks as "the tracks that unite us."

Our work in Brasil continues to burn brightly, fueled by the inspiration and enthusiasm of the young rastreadores Brasileiros. At this time, we can think of no better work than training these young people to care for the beautiful gift that is Brasil. With saudades for our many Brasilian hosts and friends for their dedication and hospitality, we look forward to more remarkable experiences with the natural world in Brasil and the second year of Nutrindo as Ra¡zes.

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