The Human Resilience Project Embarks Upon Paraguay Expedition

SEATTLE - Rezul -- The Human Resilience Project (THRP) departs October 4 for its fourth expedition, traveling to Paraguay to work with a community that is part of the Avá Guaraní Paranaense people. The expedition opens with meetings at Amnesty International's office in Asunción before the team continues to the Alto Paraná region.

The expedition carries Explorers Club Flag No. 12 and an Explorers Club Rolex watch, connecting the expedition to the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. This recognition extends a lineage of exploration in service of ecological and cultural documentation to THRP's Paraguay research.

The Avá Guaraní Paranaense community sits in the Alto Paraná corridor, roughly three to four hours from the capital. The people lost much of their ancestral territory to flooding during construction of the Itaipú hydroelectric dam in the 1970s and 1980s. Communities on both sides of the Paraná River have spent more than four decades pressing Paraguay, Brazil, and Itaipú Binacional for restitution, and families in the area have reoccupied portions of their unflooded ancestral land. The community currently faces legal action seeking their eviction from that territory, brought by Itaipú Binacional. THRP's fieldwork will document how the community sustains itself, culturally and psychologically, while that claim to its land remains contested.

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"The Avá Guaraní Paranaense have spent forty years asserting a claim the law itself protects," said Dr. Constance Scharff, Founder and Principal Investigator of THRP. "We go to Alto Paraná to document how a people holds its identity together while that claim is still being fought."

This work is made possible by local liaison Mary Paz Brown Beckelmann, a community organizer and social advocate. Scharff and Beckelmann met through the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

About The Human Resilience Project

The Human Resilience Project is a ten-nation investigation led by Constance Scharff, PhD, examining how Indigenous and remote communities sustain psychological resilience under climate disruption and conflict. THRP works with each partner community as an epistemic collaborator, building toward a popular press book due in 2028. More information is available at www.THRProject.com.