Sacred Forest · v2 · June 2026
White Paper
Aldeia Experience
A proposal for a long-term contribution to the official ACRE incubation programme led by Mathilde Everaere (Maah) for Sacred Forests. Three pillars, a transversal R&D layer, a documentary, a 6–12 month calendar.
Exergue
The prophecies speak of a time when different forms of intelligence would no longer compete, but collaborate.
Where technology learns from nature instead of trying to dominate it.
Where forests are understood not as resources, but as living libraries.
Maybe the prophecy was never meant to remain only a story. Maybe it was always waiting to be embodied.
— Mathilde Awa Everaere (Maah), June 2026
In brief
A structured contribution to the ACRE programme.
Aldeia Experience plugs into three of the seven official pillars of the ACRE programme — Audiovisual & narrative autonomy, Monitoring & environmental intelligence, Women/Youth/Leadership — with a transversal R&D layer on long-term engagement (inter-ethnic logbook, aldeic KPIs, sovereign second brains for villages) and a documentary strand (a series of 4–5 episodes of ~20 min).
The calendar follows the official framework: 6 to 12 months, 3 immersive missions of ~15 days, ~100 participants per mission, a minimum of 3 territories represented.
A major strategic convergence is emerging with Gunter Pauli, already active on Forest 01 (Sierra Nevada / Kogis Arhuacos) with his Inter-Species Dialogue Centre — Aldeia Experience can become the Amazonian mirror of that Andean initiative.
Posture: consultant upstream, free agent on site, maximum autonomy for the indigenous partners on exit. Knowledge is co-produced, not transferred.
The shared observation
Three observations underpin the proposal.
Indigenous peoples are the best guardians of the essential forests
Forests with the highest integrity sit at the intersection of indigenous lands and protected areas (Sze et al., Current Biology, 2022). In Brazil, indigenous territories with recognised collective rights show a deforestation rate 66% lower.
Modern technology is coming in either way
Phones, social platforms, generative AI, drones, satellite monitoring: these tools are entering indigenous territory whether it is anticipated or endured. The question is no longer whether but how. Without proper support, arrival happens through the least ethical channels.
The operational challenge on long-term engagement is documented
The tribal contracts scheduled over 10 years raise a structural question: how do we maintain motivation and traceability once the initial financial reward has been paid out? Classic Western KPIs (hectares, tonnes of carbon) are necessary for funders but insufficient to anchor a living cultural dynamic.
Aldeia Experience positions itself precisely at the intersection of these three observations.
Vision
The Aldeia as an operational model, not an object of study.
Aldeia is the Portuguese word for an indigenous village in Brazil. But the aldeia is not merely a place — it is a matrix of organisation. The tuxaua (chief) regulates internal conflicts, organises assemblies, welcomes visitors and steers both agriculture and trade.
The aldeic structure is by construction a distributed, resilient, frugal and living-oriented intelligence.
Aldeia Experience proposes to take this matrix seriously not as an object of anthropological study but as an operational model that modern digital levers must adapt to — not the other way around.
The crossing of knowledges — no one-way transmission
On the indigenous side — a fine-grained knowledge of the living world, a long relationship with the forest, protocols of care and ceremony, communal decision-making sovereignty, an innate sense of framing and visual harmony (the Keneya concept identified by Maah with the Huni Kuin).
On the contemporary side — modern transmission levers (audiovisual, storytelling, e-learning), monitoring tools (drone, sensors, analytical AI), digital autonomy protocols (second brains, local AI, data sovereignty).
The bridge is explicit — it has meaning, ethics, protocols, safeguards. It owns the asymmetry: indigenous peoples are on the front line of a planetary struggle and we owe them the tools without imposing our pathologies on them.
The official framework
The ACRE incubation programme.
Aldeia Experience is not a parallel programme. It is a structured contribution to the official ACRE incubation programme — Biocultural & Climate Regeneration Initiative – Western Amazon (Brazil).
Official structure · 3 missions over 6–12 months
Mission 1 · Diagnosis
Territorial Diagnosis & System Mapping. Ecological mapping, governance, knowledge, identification of leaders and capacities.
Mission 2 · Capacity Building
Prototyping. Agroforestry, drone and monitoring, bioeconomy, ethnotourism pilots, training in audiovisual autonomy.
Mission 3 · Autonomy
Autonomy & Governance Structuring. Governance, legal advocacy, community consultations, archival systems.
The model hub
~100 participants per mission, a minimum of 3 territories represented, collective housing and communal life, circulation of knowledge across territories.
The 7 official pillars
Reforestation & Agroforestry
Monitoring & Environmental Intelligence
Bioeconomy & Value Chains
Ethnotourism & Cultural Exchange
Audiovisual Autonomy
Women, Youth & Leadership
Legal Systems & Governance
Aldeia contributes to pillars 2, 5, 6
Core principle: Knowledge is co-produced, not transferred.
Mik's contributions
Three pillars served directly.
Pillar 5
Audiovisual Autonomy
Primary contribution
Storytelling, ideation and design, capture (camera, sound, light), editing, personal brand, positioning of AI within the production chain. Open-source e-learning modules + field workshops + remote follow-up.
Pillar 2
Monitoring & Environmental Intelligence (drone)
Primary contribution
Piloting, equipment management, flight safety and ethics, data transfer and processing with sovereignty. Progression across 3 missions like learning an instrument. Identification of drone referents in each village.
Pillar 6
Women, Youth & Leadership
Cross-cutting contribution
Served indirectly by the two above. Content and drone training prioritise young people and — on request — can integrate dedicated female cohorts. Passing on the narrative voice is an act of inter-generational leadership.
Transversal infrastructure · open-source e-learning
All transmission content is structured as open-source e-learning modules — versioned, reusable, translatable, forkable by another tribe. Andragogy rather than pedagogy, biomimicry applied to transmission, ADHD-friendly, minimal tooling, cross-translation into the languages involved.
Transversal R&D layer
Solving long-term engagement frictions.
Three hypotheses targeting the operational frictions identified by Sacred Forests, in particular motivation and monitoring of commitments after the initial disbursement of funds.
Inter-ethnic logbook
Auto-translated by AI into the tribal languages involved. A Huni Kuin village in Acre reads what a Sateré Mawé village in Amazonas is experiencing at the same phase of the lunar cycle. A living narrative thread between tribes, independent of funder mediation. Audio-first, no likes, no attention-driven algorithm.
Aldeic KPIs — engagement in tiers
A co-built system unlocking funding tiers according to indicators chosen by the tribes: square metres protected, effective drone hours, documented inter-tribal exchanges, transmission workshops, e-learning modules completed. KPIs must be co-written with the tribes, culturally validated, and revisable.
Sovereign second brains for villages
Every partner village gets a local server + knowledge base + assistant AI storing its own data. Sovereign by construction: it lives physically on the territory, no dependence on third-party platforms, offline by default. A lightweight model (Llama/Mistral) fine-tuned on the languages involved.
No hypothesis is delivered if it has not been validated by the communities involved.
Documentary
Memory and narrative legitimacy.
A documentary series of 4 to 5 episodes of ~20 minutes each, designed for platform distribution (YouTube, specialist broadcasters) and use by Sacred Forests on its own channels.
Core narrative: a peaceful war — equipping warriors of the Earth, training sentinels to protect the forest. Hero's journey structure adapted to a serial format.
Capture format: free-flow assumed (~80% improvised, light direction). Explicit differentiation from classic anthropological documentary — no overhead, no Western expert doing the explaining. The European viewer projects themselves through a Western character in an authentic learner's posture (Mik).
Author's posture
Consultant upstream, free agent on site.
- · Bringing in the levers, transferring autonomy, exiting the setup
- · A newcomer in a learner's posture in front of indigenous knowledge, an assertive expert on transmission levers
- · Refusal of paternalism and commodification of the sacred
- · Long-term commitment to the mission, without permanent installation on the ground
- · Honest documentation of the experience, for the memory of the mission and narrative legitimacy
Sacred Forest · Incubation Programme
Aldeia Experience — the Amazonian mirror.
Strategic convergence with Gunter Pauli's Andean initiative (Forest 01 Sierra Nevada / Kogis Arhuacos). Aldeia Experience can become the Amazonian mirror of that inter-species dynamic, oriented towards ethical transmission and indigenous sovereignty.