{"id":38939,"date":"2017-10-09T09:33:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T12:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=38939"},"modified":"2025-09-13T14:08:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T17:08:54","slug":"the-sepetiba-ecomuseum-redefavelasustentavel-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=38939","title":{"rendered":"The Sepetiba Ecomuseum #SustainableFavelaNetwork [PROFILE]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Por<\/strong>tugu\u00eas<\/strong><\/a><\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Initiative<\/strong><\/span>: Sepetiba Ecomuseum (Ecomuseu de Sepetiba)
\nContact<\/strong><\/span>:\u00a0\u00a0Blog<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Website<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook Profile<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Email<\/a>
\nYear Founded<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a02007
\nCommunity<\/strong><\/span>: Sepetiba
\nMission<\/span><\/strong>: “Research, maintain, document, decipher, value, and disseminate testimonials of man and the environment, with the objective of collaborating in the building and transmission of collective memories, and for local sustainable and itegral development.”
\nPublic Events<\/strong><\/span>: Recognition and Ecotourism Tour<\/a>, first Sunday of every month
\nHow to Contribute<\/strong><\/span>: The Ecomuseum looks for researchers of all backgrounds to aid in their community history and ecology work. Donations of books, especially those written in braille, are requested for their community library.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Early on a warm September morning in Rio\u2019s far\u00a0West Zone<\/a> neighborhood of Sepetiba<\/a>, a large group of residents and visitors gathered around its historic seaside bandstand<\/a> for the Sepetiba Ecomuseum<\/a>\u2019s monthly Passeio de Reconhecimento<\/em><\/a>, or Tour of Recognition. Professor Luiz Bolete welcomed them with an opportunity to make their own instruments out of re-purposed plastic bottles followed by a percussion workshop. Then, the crowd swelled for an awards ceremony recognizing outstanding contributions to the community. Finally, Emerson, a local physical education teacher, led stretching and a warm-up before the tour started. Bianca Wild<\/a>, founding member of the Ecomuseum and Professor of Sociology for Rio\u2019s State Education Secretariat (SEEDUC), addressed the participants. \u201cThose here for the first time will experience a different Sepetiba,\u201d she said. \u201c[The purpose of this tour] is to make Sepetiba visible and disseminate its history<\/a> so as to raise residents’ self-esteem, which is a fundamental element of mobilization and struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sepetiba<\/a><\/p>\n

The morning\u2019s events and the historical-ecological tour\u00a0demonstrated the type of community togetherness and pride the Sepetiba Ecomuseum hopes to promote in a community of 60,000 people that faces pollution<\/a>, economic stagnation, and peripheralization<\/a>. The group visited imperial ruins and indigenous archaeological sites while enjoying stunning views of the Sepetiba Bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not have a headquarters. Our museum, our archive, our building is all of Sepetiba\u2026 It\u2019s a museum from the bottom up,” Wild explained. As a territorial museum reflecting a type of \u2018new\u2019 or ‘social’ museology<\/a>, the ecomuseum concept<\/a> is to be \u201caware of the community with the objective of developing its territory through the valuing of its local history and patrimony, both natural and cultural,\u201d according to the ecomuseum of neighboring Santa Cruz<\/a>. Sepetiba’s Ecomuseum is one of many social museology movements happening in favelas around Rio<\/a> as platforms for resistance<\/a>. It seeks to uncover the relationships<\/a> between its residents, history, and environment to mobilize for positive change.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The initiatives that the group of nine Ecomuseum volunteers run in their community respond to the area’s particular needs and history. Wild explains that Sepetiba has played an important role in Brazil\u2019s history<\/a> from the pre-colonial era to the modern republic. The monthly tour visits a sambaqui<\/a>, a meters tall mound of limestone and shells built by indigenous peoples thousands of years ago as places of settlement and burial grounds for their dead. Sepetiba is a Portuguese pronunciation of the indigenous Tamoio tribe’s word referring to the presence of native sap\u00ea<\/em> vegetation<\/a>. After colonization, Portugal’s King John VI ordered the construction of an imperial port and forts in Sepetiba, which was a summer destination for the royal family in the 19th century.<\/p>\n

More recently in the 1970s and 80s, Sepetiba Bay attracted many visitors to its lush beaches. However, the construction of the industrial Port of Itagua\u00ed in 1982 began a process of environmental degradation<\/a> that has culminated with the controversial TKCSA steel processing plant<\/a>. This pollution nearly destroyed<\/a> tourism and fishing industries in Sepetiba and left many residents needing to work outside the community. Wild spoke of the Ecomuseum\u2019s struggles to mobilize a population that travels<\/a> five or more hours a day to work or to get a university education in Centro<\/a> or the South Zone<\/a>. She told RioOnWatch<\/em>, \u201cBeing a \u2018dormitory neighborhood\u2019 of the segregated West Zone, [Sepetiba] has lives with the absence of public investment in various aspects. Many times, residents can\u2019t participate [in our programming] because they wake up every day at 3:40am to go to work. They get back home at 11pm. They have the weekend to care for their houses and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One way the Ecomuesum combats the effects of this social isolation and difficulty mobilizing residents is through patrimonial education in local schools. Students are invited on the monthly tours and the Ecomuseum provides ecological education in schools on the importance of its local mangrove ecosystems, which act as nurseries for marine life. According to Silvan Guedes, another member of the Ecomuseum team, \u201cthe schools are still coming [to our programming] a bit forced. But midway, they start to be more interested. They understand why the mud exists [washed onto Sepetiba\u2019s shores from a destructive canal project<\/a> in the 1990s], why the mangrove exists. Why we were part of the history of Brazil and why we aren\u2019t included in the history books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through these programs and the ongoing maintenance of a community library, Wild said, \u201cwe saw a change in the language used by students over these nine years now. Before we started the Ecomuseum page on Orkut [an early online social network]\u2026 the only pages we had were \u2018Sepetiba of Depression,\u2019 always denigrating the place. Now we have \u2018Sepetiba that Delights Me<\/a>,\u2019 \u2018Historic Neighborhood of Sepetiba<\/a>,\u2019 \u2018I Love Sepetiba<\/a>.\u2019 We believe that this is thanks to our promotion of local history. We feel very proud, very happy about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to mobilizing local youth, the Ecomuseum has succeeded in collaborating with other organizations and researchers to develop its knowledge base about the community. Wild admitted that when the group started the Ecomuseum movement, \u201ctruthfully, we didn\u2019t know what we were doing.\u201d In 2007, Wild and a small group of residents began to go to the Brazilian National Archives to find more historical sources on Sepetiba, inspired by a book written by local journalist Alceb\u00edades Francisco Rosa. In 2009, they organized a regular “memory circle” with older residents to share oral histories. When the nearby and more developed Santa Cruz Ecomuseum heard of this, the circle was included in a community museology conference, where they met Hugues de Varine<\/a>, the French museologist who coined the ecomuseum concept. \u201cHugues said that what we were doing here was community museology. He gave a name to what we were doing. So [in 2009] we started a process of recognition initially called the Sepetiba Ecomuseum Movement,\u201d related Wild.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since its beginning, the Ecomuseum has participated in social museology conferences and invited distinguished guests, like Hugues de Varine and museologist Odalice Miranda Priosti<\/a>, to develop its work. In 2015, Wild and archaeologist Claudio Prado de Mello successfully petitioned the municipality of Rio to protect the coastal area containing the ruins of the imperial port and a sambaqui. Providing further visibility to Sepetiba, journalist Andr\u00e9 Luis Mansur has written three volumes of West Zone history in his O Velho Oeste Carioca<\/em><\/a> series. Wild said of these partnerships, \u201cwe need people that can contribute to our research. Currently, we are initiating a center of orientation and of historical, sociological, anthropological, biological, and ecological research. We need people who are willing to add, to help us understand the history of our region.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ecomuseum also functions as a center for political action. During the tour, Wild and Guedes called for residents to contact them with community needs via the Ecomuseum Facebook page<\/a>. Wild said, \u201cwe want to function as a channel for the entire community\u201d to demand accountability from residents and the city government. She cited the use of the Facebook page to report someone dumping prohibited waste on the beach and as a mode of organizing<\/a> to hold government agencies to their environmental promises. She described these actions as efforts to live sustainably in a community facing pollution, litter, and sedimentation along its shores. \u201cWe believe that sustainability for us is\u2026 learning to handle adversity, transforming negative into positive for the conservation of what we consider important.”<\/p>\n

Referring to the potential to implement similar projects in other Rio communities facing precarious circumstances, Wild says that \u201cevery locality deserves a center of memory<\/a> and refuge\u2026 Generally, the dominated spaces are these spaces of refuge that are the most sacred to us, the spaces where we find peace and roots. Roots are primordial so that we always have somewhere to return, so that we always have the sense to fight for what we love, for the place we know. The first thing that anyone trying to do this type of work has to do is know the place where they live, really know it. The bad things as much as the good ones. You have to understand your territory and always look for the support of all of the population.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When asked about dreams for the future, Wild said, \u201cI hope Sepetiba returns to being valued and having visibility\u2026 that we succeed in protecting our spaces, that we succeed in making Sepetiba an alternative historic destination in the city, that we develop community tourism here so that the population that is passing through this period of economic stagnation can have a source of income. So that one doesn\u2019t need to relocate to Centro, Barra da Tijuca<\/a>, or the South Zone to work\u2026 that these discourses of local depreciation change, and we all begin to value the entire population. That this youth, this new generation that\u2019s taking part, succeeds in maintaining this work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The enthusiasm of the almost sixty Sepetiba residents who participated in the September tour was a testament to the success the Ecomuseum has had in this regard. Its motto, \u201ca mirror in which one re-views oneself and discovers one’s own image<\/a>,\u201d speaks to how it wants to involve Sepetiba residents in taking responsibility for their community. At the end of the tour,\u00a0a local student read a poem their friend had written entitled, “My Sepetiba.” The first stanza read, “Sepetiba is so beautiful, even with so much poverty \/ even being isolated. But we shine for sure.”<\/p>\n

*Ecomuseu de Sepetiba is one of over 100 community projects mapped<\/a> by Catalytic Communities<\/a>\u00a0(CatComm), the organization that publishes\u00a0RioOnWatch<\/em>, as part of our parallel ‘Sustainable Favela Network<\/a>‘ program launched in 2017 to recognize, support, strengthen and expand on the sustainable qualities and community movements inherent to<\/a> Rio de Janeiro’s favela communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Initiative: Sepetiba Ecomuseum (Ecomuseu de Sepetiba) Contact:\u00a0\u00a0Blog\u00a0|\u00a0Website\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook Profile\u00a0|\u00a0Email Year Founded:\u00a02007 Community: Sepetiba Mission: “Research, maintain, document, decipher, value, and disseminate testimonials of man and the environment, with the objective of collaborating […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":38951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1288,1290,1333,1670,1284,329,452,1329],"tags":[549,1050,2109,756,258,910,2461,674,170,188,715,1101,716,962,1292,530,270,383,2558,106,2463,471,2124,2101,1871,194,21],"writer":[2516],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-civilsociety","9":"category-event-reports","10":"category-favela-tourism","11":"category-interviews-profiles","12":"category-solutions","13":"category-rio20","14":"category-by-international-observers","15":"tag-regiao-dormitorio","16":"tag-beach","17":"tag-community-museum","18":"tag-community-organizing","19":"tag-community-solution","20":"tag-creative-organizing","21":"tag-ecomuseu-sepetiba","22":"tag-memory","23":"tag-historic-preservation","24":"tag-history","25":"tag-indigenous","26":"tag-library","27":"tag-museum","28":"tag-oral-history","29":"tag-organizing","30":"tag-pollution","31":"tag-resistance","32":"tag-santa-cruz","33":"tag-self-esteem","34":"tag-sepetiba","35":"tag-social-museology","36":"tag-sustainability","37":"tag-sustainable-favela-network","38":"tag-tkcsa","39":"tag-tour","40":"tag-tourism","41":"tag-west-zone","42":"writer-lucas-smolcic-larson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81688,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38939\/revisions\/81688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38939"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=38939"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=38939"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=38939"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=38939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}