Watershed People of Montana and Amazonia/Montana Audubon Education Center

Location

Montana Audubon Center

City

Billings

Date

Mar 28 2023
Expired!

Time

5:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Labels

In-Person

Watershed People of Montana and Amazonia/Montana Audubon Education Center

Rafael Chanchari Pizuri and Juan Carlos Galeano will be at the Audubon Center at 5:00 on March 28. Join them for a walk to the Yellowstone River and a discussion of river stories from Amazonia, focusing on the plants, animals, and spiritual beliefs of traditional and Indigenous Amazonian cultures, especially Rafael’s Shawi people of Peru, along with how these stories may also resonate with those of us who live along the Yellowstone. At 7:00, Rafael and Juan Carlos will be joined by MSUB cultural geographer Susan Gilbertz, author of Bringing Sustainability to the Ground Level: Competing Demands in the Yellowstone River Velley, for a talk comparing environmental challenges faced by people of Amazonia and the Yellowstone Valley.
Born in the Peruvian Amazon, Rafael Chanchari Pizuri is a philosopher and Amazonian from the Shawi ethnic group, whose spiritual ecological discourse, rooted in cosmovisions of the Indigenous cultures of the Peruvian Amazon, foregrounds the current environmental challenges and complex symbolic narratives of Indigenous Amazonians. He is also a herbalist, community leader, and teacher, who has contributed significantly to the education of Indigenous bilingual teachers of many ethnic groups in the Zungarococha Formabiap school in Iquitos, Peru.

Juan Carlos Galeano is a poet, essayist, and filmmaker born in the Amazon region of Colombia. Over a decade of fieldwork on the symbolic narratives of riverine and forest people in the Amazon basin resulted in a comprehensive collection of stories (Folktales of the Amazon, 2008. Cuentos amazónicos 2016); two documentary films (The Trees Have a Mother and Él Rio) His poetry inspired by Amazonian cosmologies and the modern world has been anthologized and published in international journals such as Casa de las Américas (Cuba), The Atlantic Monthly and Ploughshares (U.S.). He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he teaches Latin American poetry and Amazonian Cultures at Florida State University.

Susan Gilbertz grew up on a ranch in northeastern Wyoming. She is a professor of geography at Montana State University Billings. She has directed the MSUB environmental studies program and is currently Acting Associate Dean of the MSUB School of Business. Her work concerning the Yellowstone River valley includes a comprehensive cultural inventory study consisting of interviews of valley residents representing different areas of interest and a 2022 book, Bringing Sustainability to the Ground Level: Competing Demands in the Yellowstone River Valley.

The event is finished.