Charms, trails, and crossroads along the Choró River, Siará

Abstract

This article, centered on the territory of the Choró River, Siará, seeks to identify the values of the dominant, Eurocentric culture that manifest in urban planning policies and that discredit the cosmologies of the original peoples of this region. The reflection is situated in the historical context of territorial dispute and the oppression exerted on Paiacu, Potiguara, Pitaguaris, and Jenipapo Kanindé populations. The study employs autoethnographic research, guided by an inventory of materialities, oral narratives, and fieldwork. The investigation uncovers local history based on a set of documents found in the Ultramarine Historical Archive (Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino) in Lisbon, relating to 1760 and 1761. These documents include letters written by indigenous people from the then Vila de Mecejana (current Messejana), as well as pieces of bobbin and spun lace, woven by girls of the "village of Indians". These activities reveal the imposition of the foreign language and the invention of trades as a form of expropriation and forced labor, inscribing the hand of the colonizer. By navigating the waterway (the Choró River), understood as an "event" and a stage for dispute, the work aims to retake territories, revive insurgencies, and revisit open wounds, proposing an awakening to embodied memory and the resurgence of indigenous communities.