VÍTOR DA SILVA

In this participant-observation research, Vítor explores the relationship between ritual and resistance among the Noke Kuin people. He studied the different ways in which sacred rituals provide value to their lives, and analysed how the invocation of ritual codes relate to their capacity to resist against external threats.

As the Himalayan ice caps melt into one big river, indigenous voices like those of the Changpa people, are being dissolved into a larger, but lonelier, whisper. As the glaciers continue to shrink, so too are our cultural, social and spiritual possibilities being narrowed into a monochromatic way of being.

In this ethnographic research Vítor journeys into the Colombian Amazon to live with one of the last Yukuna shamans. While many indigenous communities have been 'disintegrated' into the margins of nearby towns, Don Fermin and his family chose to stay back and live by the laws of the jungle and the will of the river.  

In the Peruvian Amazon, a mega-development highway project threatens the ancestral lands of the Maijuna people. In this project, Vítor works closely with men, women, children and elders to protect one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world — a place that has nurtured the Maijuna for generations.

In a remote Portuguese village, a community unites for the revival of a mask ritual, rooted in Pagan traditions from a few tribes that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula.