Makota Valdina Oliveira Pinto (b. 1943) is a ritual elder in the Afro-Brazilian religion, Candomblé. She is also an educator, a community organizer and an internationally recognized environmental justice and human rights activist. Makota Valdina was a founding member of the St. Bartholomew Environmental Education Center — where she directed a project to link Afro-Brazilian ritual and medicinal plant knowledge with environmental preservation and grassroots citizenship education. She is currently the Makota Ngunzu of the Nzo Oniboyá Candomble community in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
Publications
Candomble Cosmology and Environmental Education (lecture at Iliff School of Theology, 2002)
Afro-Brazilian Religion, Resistance and Environmental Ethics (Pinto, Harding, 2016)