Pulitzer Rainforest Journalism Fund grantee and Fulbright scholar (Brazil 2022). From 2022-2023, I travelled up and down the Tocantins River in the Brazilian Amazon, visiting traditional river communities that would be impacted by a Brazilian government plan to detonate and dredge their river to make it a shipping channel to export soy, other grains, minerals and beef more quickly to Asia and Europe. These communities included quilombos, whose ancestors fled slavery to form freed communities in the forest, as well as Indigenous and other traditional river folk (ribeirinhos). I want to thank these communities for their patience and understanding as I asked a thousand questions and clicked just as many photos.
The larger project is a book I'm writing on my river journeys on the Tocantins River, following traditional river communities as they try to resist the government plan to blow up their river, which experts I've interviews say would be a disaster for the fish populations, forests, and their traditional cultures.
If you're a curious reader, please check out my articles at muckrack.com/tiffany-higgins-1/portfolio.
I continue to travel to the Brazilian Amazon to do reportage, so if you want me to tell you a story, please don't hesitate to drop me a note. tifhiggins @ yahoo . com Thanks for taking a look at the photos!
Correction: the caption for the Aikewara Suruí photo should read "reserve," not "reservoir," as in: They are a "riverless people" as they were forced into a reserve without river access, as a cacique (chief) told me.
