"Indigenous people's Cultural Support Trust"
registered charity no: 1050461
Patron: Sir Professor Ghillean Prance
Trustees; Emily Burridge, Tim Miller, Patrick and Sue Cunningham
The trust was founded in 1995 by Emily Burridge "To aid in the promotion and conservation of Indigenous people’s culture and traditional knowledge."
The first development initiative to be completed was the "Marimbu Xavante Health Centre" and medicinal gardens which was inaugurated in 1998. This first "project" was implemented by Emily in collaboration with a Xavante Chief and his community. It was allocated match funding by the governmental office the ODA and the rest of the funding came from donations by trusts and individuals.
Emily insured that all funding was distributed and accounted for by personally overseeing the payments in Brazil.
She also accompanied a Xavante nurse on a course "Living Medicinal gardens" with Professor Matos at the federal university in Fortaleza. He returned to the village and was responsible for the medicinal gardens adjacent to the health centre.
Emily is now developing a sustainable initiative with the Xavante community "Xavante Tree Nursery". This has developed through Emily's observation of the situation on the reserve when she visited the community in 2007. The reservation where the Xavante live has become isolated within the monoculture of soya. The soya has created an economic boom in Brazil but at a great exspense to the natural environment of the Mato Grosso.
The reserve where the Xavante live is now effectively an island within this sea of soya and holds within it a blueprint of the fauna and flora of the original cerrado. Emily recognising the value of this to the Xavante is now helping them set up a Tree Nursery so as a sustainable buisness can be created in the cultivation of plants and trees from within the reserve.
This will help with the regeneration and conservation of plants and trees within the reserve as well as making available for distribution in local towns and deforested areas which are quickly requiring vegetation to avoid soil erosion.
For further reference a full account of the Tree Nursery initiative together with an itemised budget is under the heading on this blog: Xavante Tree Nursery
To find out more about the current work of the Trust in general please visit: www.ipcst.org
