Afrofuture | Morena Mariah | TEDxLaçador

Morena Mariah talks about the past of black people from the perspective of the interruption of black lives by the process of enslavement, starting with some adversities she experienced as she grew up as a black girl living between the favela and the condominiums of Rio de Janeiro. As she looks into the past, she begins to question the future. Her research has led her to futurism, a science which tries to understand the challenges we face in the present and use them to build the future we want to have. Morena sees the future of black people as having unlimited possibilities, and she invites everyone to go through the difficult change process to build a future where all people will have a place.

Morena Mariah chose Rio's favelas to leave her legacy and sees the favela, not as a problem, but as a solution. Passionate about the exchange of knowledge and ideas, she works as a communication strategist with an emphasis on videos. She is a graduate in media studies from Universidade Federal Fluminense, UFF, and is a pedagogical coordinator of popular spaces, including GATOMídia, a media and technology place of learning for young blacks in Complexo do Alemão, a group of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. She is the creator of the Afrofuturo project. Morena's main focus is to be an example for the girls and women of the favela where she lives. She dreams of a world where children can have other perspectives for the future beyond what is currently presented to black people.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I'd like you to close your eyes
and do an exercise.

Can you do this for me?

Audience: Yes!

Morena Mariah: So,
you can close your eyes.

I want you to imagine
the future 100 years from now.

I want you to try to visualize,
inside your heads,

how life will be for people
100 years from now.

You can open your eyes ...

And I want you, honestly -

I want those of you who imagined
black people like me, like AD Junior,

living their lives peacefully
100 years from now,

to raise your hand.

Happily, we have a good number.

I want to talk a little
about this with you today.

My name is Morena Mariah.

I was a girl who,
throughout my life journey,

lived between two realities.

I'm the daughter of separated parents
and lived between the favela

and the middle-class
condominiums in Rio de Janeiro.

Today, I consider myself a scavenger.

I'm a scavenger of knowledge and wisdom,

especially from African culture

and the African diaspora in the world.

I research these things,

and I started to do this autonomously,
alone, and for my own interest.

Throughout my life journey,

I've run into some adversities,

and it's about these that I want
to talk about today with you.

When I was 10 years old,

I experienced the first
of these adversities.

I was in a history class,

in the private school where I studied,

one of the school's few black girls,
as you can imagine,

and the teacher started to tell
the story of Brazil's discovery -

how Cabral came from Portugal
with his ships, his maritime expedition,

and arrived here to "discover" Brazil.

And that, after this, people like me,
black people, of my color,

were kidnapped from the African continent
and forcibly brought to this place.

And that, after this,
many things happened,

and blacks were the labor force

that sustained the process
of civilizing this place.

I was very bothered by this story,

and I was so bothered

that it's already been 18 years,
and I still remember it.

But this story provoked a change in me.

It clicked with me

because I realized that my friends,

the people who were sharing
that classroom, and my teacher,

would not experience
the same things as me.

If we were to enter a time machine

and travel into the past,

who would I be, arriving in Brazil,
inside a slave ship?

Who would my friends be?

Who would you be?

What role would we play in this story?

Doing this exercise was very painful

because, in an unconscious way,

I knew that there was
something wrong with this story.

And what was wrong

is that I couldn't accept
the story of who I was,

limiting myself to be labor force.

We weren't "things."

And then, after I became an adult,
I started to read and research,

and it interested me

from a historical perspective
that recognized us as human beings.

I found the intellectual Marimba Ani.

This black woman elaborated
a concept called Maafa,

which, in Swahili,
means "the great disaster."

For professor Marimba Ani,
the process of enslaving black people

is a big holocaust in our history,

and it's a rupture.

This made me see
that there was another story.

From our perspective,
we're not labor force.

Our lives and history were interrupted

by the enslavement process.

Marimba Ani says that Maafa
is the whole process

from when we were kidnapped

up to where we are today;

the process of mass incarceration
and all the other things,

the consequences we already discussed
here in different ways today.

Looking at this past, from the perspective
of professor Marimba Ani,

made me question

how the Maafa process will continue,

how this "banzo", this nostalgia
we feel for Africa will continue.

Will it end?

It made me think of the future.

Thinking of the future,
I began to research

and found others thinking this way.

I started to dig and scavenge
for more knowledge,

and I found futurism,
or futurology, right?

It's nothing more than the science
of understanding today's challenges

to build an awesome future,
the future we want to have.

I said, "Wow, we need
to think about this."

We who are black.

When we think about the future,

in general, we think about technology,
artificial intelligence, and flying cars.

We usually think of the distant future
when we'll no longer be around.

But the future is the next 10 years,
the future is when my child will be born.

The future is when black children,
currently alive, will become adults.

And the future is the next 30 years.

The majority of us will still be alive,

so we need to worry about the future.

And then ...

thinking a little about this revised
historical view that I had to make

and this black perspective of history,

I came upon this symbol.

This symbol means Sankofa.

It's a symbol of Akan philosophy ...

It's an ideogram of Akan philosophy,
from a people who live in Ghana today.

And this people created this figure
to represent a proverb

which says that it's never too late for us
to go back to recover what's left behind.

I understand that to talk of the future,
you can't not talk about the past.

We only know where we're going
when we know where we've been.

And Sankofa taught me this.

Sankofa taught me that I must know
the memories of my family and of my people

to know with more certainty
where I want to go,

aware of what will be good for us

and aware of the strategies

which were created for us
to survive in the future.

And not only to survive,
but that we can ...

enjoy life

so that we live happily, as I said
to you at the start of this conversation.

Throughout my life, I taught in favelas,

I worked on social projects,
and I saw many things.

I saw much violence.

Just like the intellectual
and researcher Ytasha Womack ...

She is North American,

and she went to an Afro-American school,
where they only had black children,

and started doing an activity with them.

She asked these children
the same thing that I asked you,

"What do you see
when you look to the future?"

And the children unanimously responded

that they wanted to see
a future without violence.

This is unanimous among black people.

She asked for details
and for them to visualize more,

"OK, I understand
you don't want to see violence,

but what do you want to see?

How does this future appear
in the little details?"

The children started to relate
that they wanted to play in the street.

A black child wants to run in the street
without being mistaken for a thief.

They wanted to see their parents alive.

They wanted to see a world without guns.

And this is very ...

it's very sad,

but it's also very powerful.

Ytasha tells us that,
at the end of this conversation,

a girl came up to her
and asked her if what she wanted

from this exercise

was to have the children understand

that whatever we imagine
for the future can be built.

And it's obvious, I don't need
to tell you that this child was right

because children have a capability

to simplify very complex things.

And as we get older,

we begin to lose this capability

to understand, in a simple way,
things that seem very difficult.

Throughout my journey in the favelas,

I collected many things and many stories,

met many people, taught classes,

and I saw a lot of violence, as I said.

But, I'm an optimistic person.

I recognize that, in the midst
of these environments

that have scarce resources
and much hardship,

there is much richness:

human potential.

It's those who live there,

producing their own lives
in the midst of so little.

We do miracles.

Researching about people
who came from the favela,

I found Carolina Maria de Jesus,

a writer.

Carolina, at the beginning
and throughout much of her life,

was a garbage scavenger.

It's for this reason, in homage to her,
I call myself a scavenger.

She scavenged paper to survive,

and, in the midst of this paper,
she scavenged books and read them.

She scavenged notebooks,

and it was in these notebooks,
scavenged from the garbage,

that she wrote her books -

books that were translated
into more than 14 languages -

and she became

one of the best authors of this country.

Carolina taught me

that there's no shame in coming
from where we come from,

and there's no shame in going back
to take what's left behind.

We must do this.

And coming from this place
that is ours alone,

we are strong,

we can talk about the future,

and we can talk about our present,

in a way that people
can truly connect with us.

I learned this from Carolina.

While I was working

and spending time in the favelas,

I met this woman.

Her name is Carla Siccos.

She was a student
in a technology project I worked in

in the Complexo do Alemão favela.

She's a community journalist

who created a newspaper
called "CDD Acontece,"

where she exposes the reality
of Cidade de Deus,

and she talks from the perspective
of someone who lives there.

She doesn't talk about the shootings,
the number of deaths,

the number of robberies.

She tells about Cidade de Deus

from the stories of people who live there.

She's changed the trajectory
of that community.

Recently, CDD Acontece
was recognized by WhatsApp

who made a mini-documentary
about Carla's work.

She shares, through broadcast messages,

employment opportunities,
education vacancies,

some cool stories,

trendy places, and tips
for where to eat and how to dress,

all this within her own community.

The social networks of CDD Acontece

have more than 100,000 people
who follow her work.

Carla, just like me,
and just like a ton of people here,

had only one adversity.

From this adversity, she got an idea.

And from this idea,

she changed the reality
and the future of her community.

I'm sure that there are people here

who, maybe, only have
one idea, one adversity,

and who, perhaps, don't have the resources
needed to run a newspaper.

But I want to tell you
that it's important we tell our story.

And it's important that the world knows

what the future is that we want to build.

And that's why I brought Carla, today,

to tell a little about
this movement that I've done.

To wrap this up,

I brought a little piece of the future
that I scavenged from a friend, Matias.

Matias is seven years old,

he lives in the dockland of Rio de Janeiro
with his parents, Jaciana and Leandro,

and his parents share with him
many cool references about black culture.

So, he is a boy who is
extremely conscious of who he is.

If you say that he looks good,
he says, "Thank you."

So, he has super self-esteem,
and he knows his personal history.

He drew, in this cartoon,
the Egyptian god, Seth,

who is known, in our western culture
as Anubis, that god with a dog's face.

This god, in Egyptian mythology,
is responsible for chaos,

for the destruction that precedes change.

And the invitation that I want
to make to you, to close,

is that you commit to passing
through the difficult process of change,

because Matias -
he's seven years old, people.

It's amazing how a seven-year-old child

understands that there's chaos
and that we need to pass through it

for the future to come to us.

And this future won't come by itself.

It's in our hands to build
a different future

that embraces me, Matias, Carla,

Carolina, Marimba Ani, and everybody
who came to this stage today.

It's very important

that we commit ourselves
to the building of this future.

This was the message
I wanted to leave for you today.

Thank you.

(Applause) (Cheers)