VÍTOR DA SILVA

Vítor da Silva is an ethnographer and indigenous rights investigator.

 

He works alongside indigenous communities to strengthen their resistance movements and to expose environmental destruction, land invasions, and the violation of their rights. He has a background in anthropology, human rights, and is a trained criminal investigator.

 

His fieldwork takes him to the remotest corners of the globe. Some of the communities he has worked with include: the Maasai people (Kenya), Changpa nomadic people (Indian Himalayas), Maijuna people (Peruvian Amazon), Noke Kuin people (Brazilian Amazon), Gondh people (Central India), Yukuna people (Colombian Amazon).

 

Topics include: shamanism and sacred rituals, human-wildlife conflict and forced displacement, land rights and illegal resource extraction, indigenous traditional knowledge, repatriation of tangible cultural heritage, resistance and cultural preservation projects. 

 

His postgraduate thesis “Ritual, Resistance and the Right to Exist” focuses on the relationship between sacred rituals and the power of resistance among Indigenous Peoples in Brazil — an ethnographic research part of his Postgraduate degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Vítor is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER).