“open your heart, close your mouth”–Matsini

Yawanawá leader

As we prepare to journey into the Yawanawa territory, we as a team have been contemplating how we can show up in respectful and attuned ways. 

From our explorations, we’ve arrived at a few guiding intentions for co-creating a generative space where we are all safe to celebrate each other.

Before entering the Yawanawa territory we’ve found it helpful to practice tracking the ways that colonial power structures live within us. Our aim is to bring these patterns into awareness without shame, in the spirit of discovery and openness. 

We’ve explored resources that have helped us find a more connected humility, and to notice how the collective traumas of our society shows up in our bodies and beliefs. And we’d like to share these resources and guidelines with you: 

We ask that everyone read this resource summarizing characteristics and antidotes to white supremacy culture.  

We suggest reflecting on two key principles of “Listen” and “Learn” in preparation for this journey and for your time with the Yawanawa.

Listen...

• With a “closed mouth, open heart”–Matsini, Yawanawa tribe leader
• With patience
• to emotions and not just to the words
• To receive
• With no agenda
• To feel the other 
• To the emergence: Listen not just to what is being said in each conversation, but zoom out to try to understand the full context of a situation. Tune into what is in flow and what feels most alive or has the most momentum. Consider that it takes time to fully understand what is needed or helpful in a situation, especially when you are interacting with a culture different from your own.
• A background assumption many of us carry is that we have a right to speak and to be heard. We may not realize it until we are asked only to listen.  Recognizing and letting go of this assumption can make it easier for us to rest in listening. 
• by recognizing how the state of our body can affect how we listen: When we are more calm and grounded, we listen better. Understand what practices are most supportive to calm and ground your nervous system, and prioritize those practices before you come and while you are visiting the jungle.
• by practicing open, receptive listening: Sometimes we listen from the front of our body, grasping information and planning what we might say or how we might react. Practice listening in a way that allows you to deeply receive information. Bring your awareness to the back of your body, allow the information to wash over you.

Learn...

• By simply receiving. Learning can look like observing and listening without imposing ideas or coming up with solutions.
• With no agenda to improve or progress 
• By doing what is asked of you
• By tracking and regulating your internal agenda
• By tracking your eagerness
• From compassionate attention to mistakes
• By slowing down, building trust
• Noticing judgements and defensiveness
• Centering ourselves before entering community meetings
• Noticing how we are changed by what we encounter
• what to unlearn/ how to move away from our conditioning to jump right to action
• With a “closed mouth, open heart”

It is important to bring awareness to any ways in which we may hold culturally informed patterns of hierarchical thinking and superiority. Consider how these patterns may unconsciously manifest as a desire to lead, accomplish, perfect, and save. 

 

 

 

Of course the call to service is beautiful and important, but in many ways it is even more important to be aware of the ways in which our cultural values of control, action, and progress can be an imposition on those we seek to serve. 

These prompts are here to help us all explore more attuned ways of serving. Often, deep, respectful service can look like doing nothing more than listening, tracking our judgments, being open, receptive, and attuned to when and how it is most appropriate to act.

How to wait to share your gifts: Working on tuning into your body to understand where the desire to share is coming from. The desire to be in community or to feel useful is a beautiful one, but it is equally as important to be grounded in what is practically needed in the situation. We will have a few containers during the time in the jungle to talk about what is arising for you. Outside of these meetings, we suggest waiting until you are home from the jungle for 6 weeks before you come forward with any suggestions

The journey into the Yawanawá territory is a precious opportunity to gather and connect. We are in a time of “the great turning”, and are being pulled into greater connection with ourselves, our fellow humans and the Earth. Our collective healing flows from our personal healing. This is a lifelong journey to shed the conditioning of competition, supremacy and suffering that act as barriers. We can “call each other in” by holding each other accountable and reminding each other of a more connected way of being.

 

Additional resources:

• Yawanawá - Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
• The Neural Web Can Bridge Time - Thomas Huebl
• “Healing Collective Trauma in a Fractured World” with Thomas Hübl and Dr. Angel Acosta - Garrison Institute
• Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources 

 

 If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” These words were used by Lilla, Aboriginal Elder

The Journey to the Yawanawá is a long Journey. It might be 4 days of traveling from where you are now, to Mutum. In the jungle, you will sleep in a hammock and a mosquito net. By saying YES to this journey, you are aware of these conditions and feel excited and honored to enter their Sacred land. 

Our team for this Journey will all be volunteering their time and energy. They will receive no financial compensation for being part of this Journey.

The donations that we request for the Journey will all go in the best support of the Yawanawá. Dennis, who has spent 18 months with the tribe since 2013, will be in the jungle for 4 months to learn where the finances can be best put to use. After the Journey is completed, we are open to being completely transparent about how the finances have been directed with the people that have joined.

We are still becoming more clear about what the donation amount is that we feel appropriate for this Journey. At the moment we think that a minimum donation of $ 2000

We will also write more about some of the projects that are happening in the territory in the next months for the ones of us to feel to be in support of those.

At this time, we're asking you to deposit half of the funds via paypal, and to bring the remaining funds amount in Brazillian Reais Currency to give to Dennis when you arrive in Cruzerio do Sul. 

We reserve the right to refund your deposit if your application is not accepted.