Watershed People of Montana and Amazonia
From March 27-April 3, 2023, MSUB will host guests from Amazonia and Europe. Rafael Chanchari Pizuri, internationally recognized as an Indigenous philosopher, teacher, and community leader, will be our special guest, along with poet, folklorist, and filmmaker Juan Carlos Galeano, and researcher Corinne Fournier Kiss of the University of Bern in Switzerland. All three have participated in various ways in our study-abroad programs in Peru.
Focused on the way flowing water shapes and connects the narratives and lived experience of river valley communities, the program will feature a series of public presentations including film showings, readings, and other events on the MSUB campus, and a walk and discussion at the Montana Audubon Conservation Education Center by the Yellowstone River. Events will highlight students and former students from MSUB and from Florida State University who have participated in study-abroad programs in the Amazon basin in 2019 and 2022. Guests will also visit MSUB classes and attend the International Food Fair. A highlight of the program is the opportunity for Rafael Chanchari, a member of the Shawi nation of Peru, to meet and share experiences with members of Indigenous communities of Montana.
Free event parking MSUB Parking Garage.
Events listed are free and open to the public.
Funding has been provided by the Susan Webster fund, MSUB and Humanities Montana.
March 27, 2023 - 5:00pm Liberal Arts Building, Room 800
Opening Reception (5:00pm), "Functions and Values of Water in the Cosmovisions of Amazonians": Keynote Talk by Corinne Fournier Kiss (6:30pm).
March 28, 2023 - 5:00pm at the Montana Audubon Center
Walk to the Yellowstone River at Montana Audubon Center, followed by a discussion of contemporary river communities and environmental challenges: Susan Gilbertz/Rafael Chanchari/Juan Carlos Galeano. Montana Audubon Center is located at 7026 S Billings Blvd, Billings, MT 59101.
March 29, 2023 - 6:30pm Liberal Art Building, Room 205
“Cosmovisions of Amazonia“: Rafael Chanchari Pizuri and Juan Carlos Galeano. This is part of the Sue Hart Memorial Lecture Series.
March 30, 2023 - 3:00pm Liberal Arts Building, Room 205
“Amazon Reflections”: Poetry by Bernard Quetchenbach with response and Spanish translations by Juan Carlos Galeano, Corinne Fournier Kiss and Laura Parces.
March 30, 2023 - 6:30pm Student Union Building, Beartooth Room
Presentation by Amazon trip participants, following International Food Fair.
March 31, 2023 - 1:30pm Liberal Arts Building, Room 203 (La Plaza)
El Río - Film and discussion
April 1, 2023 - Visit to Crow Nation or with Crow elders and students in Billings
For more details, reach out to the Native American Achievement Center.
April 2, 2023 - Native American Cultural Ceremony and discussion with tribal elders
For more details, reach out to the Native American Achievement Center.
Biographies
Born in the Peruvian Amazon, Rafael Chanchari Pizuri is a philosopher and Amazonian from the Shawi ethnic group, whose spiritual ecological discourse, rooted in cosmovisions of the Indigenous cultures of the Peruvian Amazon, foregrounds the current environmental challenges and complex symbolic narratives of Indigenous Amazonians. He is also an herbalist, community leader, and teacher, who has contributed significantly to the education of Indigenous bilingual teachers of many ethnic groups in the Zungarococha Formabiap school in Iquitos, Peru.
Juan Carlos Galeano is a poet, essayist, and filmmaker born in the Amazon region of Colombia. Over a decade of fieldwork on the symbolic narratives of riverine and forest people in the Amazon basin resulted in a comprehensive collection of stories (Folktales of the Amazon, 2008; Cuentos amazónicos 2016); two documentary films (The Trees Have a Mother and Él Rio); both films feature Chanchari. His poetry inspired by Amazonian cosmologies and the modern world has been anthologized and published in international journals such as Casa de las Américas (Cuba), The Atlantic Monthly and Ploughshares (U.S.). He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, where he teaches Latin American poetry and Amazonian Cultures at Florida State University.
Corinne Fournier Kiss, a faculty member at the University of Bern in Switzerland, has taught at universities throughout Europe. In 2009 she received the French Prix européen du Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for her book of literary criticism dedicated to the representation of cities in European Literature, and has translated a number of works from a variety of European languages into French. Her research areas include literature and narratives representing Amazonia, in French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Susan Gilbertz grew up on a ranch in northeastern Wyoming. She is a professor of geography at Montana State University Billings. She has directed the MSUB environmental studies program and is currently Acting Associate Dean of the MSUB School of Business. Her work concerning the Yellowstone River valley includes a comprehensive cultural inventory study consisting of interviews of valley residents representing different areas of interest and a 2022 book, Bringing Sustainability to the Ground Level: Competing Demands in the Yellowstone River Valley.
Bernard Quetchenbach is a professor of English at Montana State University Billings. With Juan Carlos Galeano, he has brought student groups to the Peruvian Amazon in 2019 and 2022. His essay collection Accidental Gravity was named one of two honorable mentions in the 2017 Foreword Indies Book of the Year contest. “The Man by the Fire,” his meditation on a Gary Snyder poem, was selected as the 2019 winner of the O. Marvin Lewis award from Weber: The Contemporary West. He edited The Bunch Grass Motel: The Collected Poems of Randall Gloege, a 2018 High Plains Book Awards finalist. With Mary Newell and Sarah Nolan, he edited Poetics for the More-Than-Human World, an international anthology of poetry and commentary.