Xukuru Human Rights

6/4/12 We spent Monday the 4th working on the video we were asked to create for the field school. A while back, Marquinho told us that it was great that we were here and got to experience Brazil and the Xukuru’s way of life, but really that our main purpose for being here was to spread the word about the Xukuru and all the problems they are facing. After opening up his home and taking time out of his busy schedule to accommodate us, that’s the only thing he has ever asked for in return. If we don’t use what we have learned to get the message out, we might as well have just stayed home. Throughout the duration of our trip, we’ve been taking plenty of pictures and videos to eventually use to compile a video about our experience here. After a few meetings about what we wanted to do, the girls and I decided to focus less on our experience here and more about a specific message we wanted to send out to the world. We decided on creating a short message about the criminalization faced by the Xukuru leaders and Marquinho’s legal battle. There are a lot of things we could have focused on, but Marquinho said it himself – if he goes to prison, what is going to happen to his people? Also, if he goes to prison, chances are he’ll be assassinated; either way, his people won’t have a leader and things the community has worked so hard at implementing would be at great risk of falling apart. For my very first video ever created, I think it turned out really quite well – short, sweet, and to the point. On an exciting note, it already has almost 70 views on Youtube! Lee had a great idea about researching some human rights blogs and writing to the authors asking them if they’d be interested in posting the video on their blogs; it would be such a great way to get more people to see it, and we want as many people to be informed on what’s going on here as possible. This is the next task I’ll be working on; hopefully word on the criminalization of the Xukuru falls into the right hands soon and the people here can wake up from this bad dream once and for all. Here's the link to the video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVQfL-dHPWs&feature=youtu.be -Shayla