This month we had the pleasure to welcome Victoria Reyes Garcia and her daughter Clara Vadez in our midst. This project owes a great deal to Viki – we often half joke she is the intellectual mother and grandmother of much of our work here.
Viki started living and working with the Tsimane’ in 1999 together with her partner, and a few years later Clara was born, who lived here for a while too. During those years they lived in one of the communities along the Maniqui river, sharing their lives with their Tsimane’ neighbours. Several years later Viki supervised Álvaro, who also wrote his PhD amongst the Tismane’, and who now in turn is leading this IEK-CHANGES project with a new generation of scholars.
Viki’s visit has been incredibly inspiring, as the stories she shared about the history of research together with the Tsimane’ people create a rich context to situate our current work in. Even more inspiring was visiting the community where she and her family lived. So many moments of joy when seeing old friends! It remembered us how our research is relational, how it is so much more than writing academic papers. It shows how at the core of this all are the relations that the Tsimane’ have with each other, with their culture, their land, river and forest – and with us, who feel eternally honoured to share and learn together with them.
