Re-membering to Belong in Disenchanted Times: Starvation of Being and Transitions to Ancestral Futures
Publication information:
Abstract
Contemporary crises—climate disruption, biodiversity collapse, and post-pandemic disorientation—are often met with technical fixes, yet many feel a deeper loss of grounding and belonging. Drawing on my book Chanting Spring: Indigenous Wisdom for Ancestral Futures, I explore belonging as an embodied ecological condition: being held by a living world. Departing from an Indigenous-led Amazonian ceremony experience, I share how chanting quiets the noise of the world, re-attunes perception, and counters a modern “starvation of being”. Read alongside COVID-19 as a threshold, chanting becomes a transferable pedagogy of re-enchantment, renewing ancestral ethics of reciprocity, humility, and responsibility for the spaces seeking lived inclusion.
Presenter Biography
Fernanda Gebara (Fê Gebara) is a lawyer and social anthropologist working at the intersection of indigenous rights, ethics, and knowledge protection in the Brazilian Amazon. She collaborates with Indigenous-led initiatives, including the Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute, and writes on indigenous rituals and medicines, relational ontologies, more-than-human ethics, and socioecological futures. She is the author of the forthcoming book Chanting Spring: Indigenous Wisdom for Ancestral Futures.