Javari Education Project

research project, spring 2021-present

As a part of the year-long Conservation Research Project, I worked with W&M’s Institute for Integrative Conservation and Céline Cousteau, filmmaker and environmentalist, to create a curriculum for 9-12 year old kids that taught them about environmental interconnectedness and sustainability from the perspective of the indigenous Marubo tribe.

Indigenous Peoples only make up 4% of the global population, yet they nurture 80% of the world’s biodiversity on their land. One of the most biodiverse regions in the world is the Brazilian Amazon, which is home to the many different indigenous groups and hosts the highest concentration of uncontacted communities in the world. Our project focused on the Marubo Tribe that resides in the Javari Territory of the rainforest. The struggles and survival of the Marubo tribe are documented in Cousteau’s documentary Tribes on the Edge (2021).

Using the film as inspiration, we drafted eight lessons that investigated and celebrated the key connections that bind us to the Amazon rainforest community: Air & Water, Biodiversity, Health & Wellbeing, Food, and Natural Resources. Because of the massive learning potential of young students, we believed that teaching them about our interconnectedness, both locally and globally, was a promising way to ensure that newer generations took charge and took care of their future.

This curriculum is currently being adopted at multiple schools internationally, and I co-presented this project with teacher Janecke Aarnaes at the International Baccalaureate Global Conference in Budapest, Hungary in 2024.

Advisors Céline Cousteau, Erica Garroutte, John Swaddle