{"id":61,"date":"2026-06-22T16:20:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T20:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/agencyforfoodsecurityinbrazil\/?post_type=chapter&p=61"},"modified":"2026-08-30T19:51:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T23:51:51","slug":"chapter-8-food-as-communication-in-the-formation-of-the-buen-vivir-in-an-indigenous-village-in-the-brazilian-northeast","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/agencyforfoodsecurityinbrazil\/chapter\/chapter-8-food-as-communication-in-the-formation-of-the-buen-vivir-in-an-indigenous-village-in-the-brazilian-northeast\/","title":{"raw":"Chapter 8 - Food as Communication in the Formation of the Buen Vivir in an Indigenous Village in the Brazilian Northeast","rendered":"Chapter 8 – Food as Communication in the Formation of the Buen Vivir in an Indigenous Village in the Brazilian Northeast"},"content":{"raw":"Rita Simone Barbosa* & Cecilia Rocha\r\n\r\n*Corresponding author: ritasimonebr@gmail.com<\/a>\r\n

1.Introduction<\/h2>\r\nHow are food and communication related? According to Martino (2002), the word communication comes from the Latin communicatio. During the Middle Ages, cenobitic monks called communicatio the act of \"taking the evening meal in common\" (Martino, 2002, p. 13). The importance of the evening meal was not the act of \"eating\", but of doing so \"together with others\", promoting an encounter between those who remained isolated in their cells during the day. By breaking the isolation through eating together, the monks communicated, nourishing themselves not only with food, but also with the knowledge and senses that were exchanged in that space of flavours. Many other authors have pointed out the value of food as more than nourishment for the body, feeding also imagination and cultures (Barthes, 2008; Fischler, 1988).\r\n\r\nIn this chapter, we examine how food has played a central communication role in the development of the Indigenous village Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba (CVJ) in Brazil. The CVJ village has a unique history. It emerged in 2005 as an experiment proposed by the leadership of groups from two different ethnic backgrounds, Pankararu and Patax\u00f3. The leaders of those two groups decided to buy land in the municipality of Ara\u00e7ua\u00ed, in the Jequitinhonha River Valley, where they would settle (initially as five families) and build a new community (Barbosa, 2025; Rocha & Liberato, 2013). Buying land was a bold (and controversial) decision, but essential in establishing a territory on which to construct the leaders\u2019 vision for the community. The land and the food produced there became essential for that construction.\r\n\r\nFood and, more specifically, the fight for food security, has been central to the village\u2019s development and its very identity. Food has served to communicate the village values between individuals, generations, and to the world. The village members\u2019 practices around food, their views on territory, their decisions on what to produce and how to produce it, all led them to Buen Vivir (Good Living).\r\n\r\nThis chapter reflects on these values and their significance. It starts by providing an overall background of the context of Indigenous groups in Brazil, some recent gains and persistent struggles. The chapter then describes the methodology used in the PhD research (Liberato, 2018) that inspired this piece: the long-term relationship between the authors and members of the village Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba (CVJ), as well as the use of participatory video. Reflections on key values embraced by members of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village are discussed, involving Commensality, Reciprocity and Solidarity, Permaculture, and Buen Vivir, followed by final considerations. This chapter aims to be a contribution to the overall goal of understanding the process of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village in (re)constructing knowledge deemed ancestral, and articulating strategies for survival and dialogue with the national society, based on the educational, communicational, and Buen Vivir domains (Liberato, 2018).\r\n

2. Brazilian Indigenous Context<\/h2>\r\nIn recent decades, various communities that self-identify as traditional have claimed the right to preserve their ways of life, cultural practices, and ways of thinking in the face of a globalized society. They organized and postulated their right to citizenship as a process of deconstructing exclusion .\r\n\r\nAccording to the Brazilian census, in 2022, there were 1,693,535 Indigenous people in the country, comprising 0.83% of the total population. Although this number represents only a fraction of the six million Indigenous people who inhabited the country in the 16th century (Grupioni, 2006), over the last few decades, there has been significant growth.\r\n\r\nIn 1991, when the first statistical survey in the current model was conducted, the total Indigenous population was only 294,000 people; while in 2010 this number grew to 896,900 (IBGE, 2010). This growth has been attributed to an increased cultural awareness and improved survey methods, which now include previously inaccessible villages (Biller & Maisonnave, 2023).\r\n\r\nThe Brazilian Indigenous population is divided into 391 ethnic groups, speaking 295 languages and living in villages and cities scattered throughout the national territory (IBGE, 2024).\r\nAlthough most Indigenous people in Brazil now live in urban areas, corresponding to 53.97% or 914,746 people, many live in rural areas, corresponding to 780,090 people, or 46.03% of the total indigenous population in the country (IBGE, 2024). From those, 44% live in the North, and 31% live in the Northeast region of Brazil (IBGE, 2024). These regions have the country's lowest Human Development Index (HDI) scores, lowest per capita incomes, and the highest poverty rates (Rodrigues & Silva, 2023).\r\n\r\nThe increased Indigenous presence in Brazil has been called an ethnogenesis or re-ethnicization. In this process, \u201cIndigenous peoples who\u2014due to political, economic, and religious pressures, or because they were stripped of their lands and stigmatized for their traditional customs\u2014were forced to hide and deny their tribal identities as a survival strategy (thereby easing the hardships of prejudice and discrimination), are now reclaiming and recreating their Indigenous traditions\u201d (Baniwa, 2006, p.28).\r\n\r\nThis growth did not necessarily result in the realization of the rights guaranteed in the 1988 Federal Constitution, which were won after a series of demands by Indigenous peoples and their allies. According to the constitution, \"the social organization, customs, languages, beliefs, and traditions of Indigenous peoples are recognized, as well as their original rights over the lands they traditionally occupy\" (Brasil, 1988, article 231). Furthermore, \"Indigenous peoples, their communities, and organizations have legal standing to sue in defence of their rights and interests\" (Brasil, 1988, article 232).\r\n\r\nThis legislation reflected Brazil's need to align itself with the global stage, where many nation-states\u2014faced with struggles for human and social rights\u2014affirmed the possibility for peoples to maintain their sociocultural practices through new legal and conceptual parameters. Following this path, in 2007, the country, along with 144 other nations, approved the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations, 2007), which reflects the demands of Indigenous groups across the globe.\r\n\r\nHowever, even though this range of official documents legally recognizes the rights of Indigenous peoples, three points remain crucial for ethnic groups to be able to \"reclaim and recreate their traditions\": 1) the demarcation of lands; 2) public health and education policies that align with what the groups consider appropriate for themselves; and 3) a place of distinction within the formation of the national society (Baniwa, 2006).\r\n\r\nDespite being mentioned in the Constitution of 1988 (Brasil, 1988), the demarcation of Indigenous lands was only regulated in 1996 (Brasil, 1996). It involved nine complex stages permeated with bureaucratic intricacies. Depending on their specificities, lands were classified as traditionally occupied, Indigenous reserves, domain lands, or restricted lands (FUNAI, 2017). The course of demarcation required a series of documents and studies that moved through different levels within the specific timeframes of Brazilian public administration. Consequently, the national political landscape directly affected and continues to affect these processes.\r\n\r\nAnthropologist Maria Ros\u00e1rio de Carvalho, who has conducted significant research and possesses extensive experience in this field, states that today:\r\n\u201cthere is an attempt\u2014not a subtle one, but a public one\u2014allied with agribusiness entrepreneurs and conservative sectors of Congress [...] to undermine Indigenous rights [...]. There is a powerful plot aimed first at delegitimizing Indigenous claims, especially regarding land, while also attacking ethnologists to project an image that they act unscrupulously by preparing what they call fraudulent reports. \u2018Inventing identities\u2019, as they claim\u201d (Carvalho, cited in Bento et al., 2016, p. 146).\r\n\r\nThe stagnation of the demarcation of Indigenous lands was associated with armed conflicts between Indigenous people and large-scale landowners (latifundi\u00e1rios). In Mato Grosso do Sul, the Guarani-Kaiow\u00e1, hemmed in at the Dourados Reserve by soy and sugarcane monocultures, faced a homicide rate 400% higher than that of the state's non-Indigenous population. Furthermore, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (Brasil, 2018) warned that this area has the highest suicide rate in the country\u2014the majority committed by youth between the ages of 15 and 29\u2014recording 89.92 per one thousand deaths compared to a national average calculated in 2015 at 9.6. The states of Bahia, Par\u00e1, Paran\u00e1, Maranh\u00e3o, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina also show high levels of violence against Indigenous people.\r\n\r\nThe violation of land rights generated various other forms of violence. For instance, the Guarani-Kaiow\u00e1 of Mato Grosso do Sul were deprived of cultivating medicinal plants and food for their own consumption. Children within this ethnic group were dying from malnutrition and permanent exposure to pesticides, which were sprayed by aircraft over the monoculture projects surrounding the reserve. This directly compromised the health and education of the group, especially children (Franceschini, 2016).\r\n\r\nRegarding access to education, the availability of Elementary and Middle schools for Indigenous children was 3.72 applicants per vacancy, while the average in the country was 1.23. This competition for spots was even more intense in High School. Leaders pointed out that community schools have inadequate physical structures and assessment methods that were ill-suited for teaching in villages. Thus, the school as a space for building societal relationships based on interculturality and political autonomy has been a primary demand of Indigenous communities (Brasil, 2007).\r\n\r\nIn search of formal education, hundreds of young people migrate to cities to attend High School. Distant from their families, they face high-risk situations. This often includes compromising their Food and Nutritional Security (FNS), defined as \u201cthe realization of everyone\u2019s right to regular and permanent access to quality food, in sufficient quantity, without compromising access to other essential needs, based on health-promoting dietary practices that respect cultural diversity and are socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable\u201d (CONSEA, 2004, p. 04).\r\n\r\nAs of 2022, there were approximately 70,000 Indigenous students enrolled in higher education institutions in Brazil, 29% enrolled in public universities and 71% in private institutions. This represents a significant increase from 11,400 in 2009, largely driven by the implementation of affirmative action policies and quotas (Loureiro, Carvalho & Rodrigues, 2024). The 2022 census further indicated that 56.1% of Brazil's 1.69 million Indigenous people are under 30 years old, pointing toward a high potential for further growth in university enrolment (Agencia Brasil, 2024; UNESCO, 2025).\r\n\r\nHowever, despite higher enrolment, Indigenous students face high dropout rates, with only about 12% graduating between 2007 and 2017. Retention is often hindered by financial difficulties and a lack of specific support policies (Schmidt, 2025) and food insecurity (Bastos, 2014). In late 2025, the Brazilian government announced the creation of the first Federal University for Indigenous peoples (Unind) to further boost access and provide tailored education to strengthen traditional identities and knowledge (Loureiro, Carvalho & Rodrigues, 2024).\r\n\r\nIndigenous students are also affected by a stigma still widely prevalent in the country, which perpetuates prejudice against the ethnic and cultural diversity of these peoples\u2014viewed as \"generic Indians\" (Ribeiro, 1982) who supposedly indulge in laziness (Dantas, 1991). It is evident that, even with their rights recognized by legislation, Indigenous peoples experience discriminatory violations like those faced by various minority groups in the country seeking social consideration.\r\n

3. The Emergence of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba Village<\/h2>\r\nIn this context, the village of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba brought together practices in the fields of education, food and nutritional security, and communication that made it unique in Brazil. It represented the first case in the country\u2019s history where two distinct ethnic groups, the Pankararu and the Patax\u00f3, joined together in the Jequitinhonha Valley to purchase 68 hectares of land. Their goal was to build a project that responded to the ways of life the community considers most appropriate for themselves.\r\n\r\nMigrants, the five families who established this village, departed from Fazenda Guarani (MG)\u2014a former prison established in the 1960s by the military regime to incarcerate individuals from various ethnic groups who, according to the authorities of the time, had committed criminal acts or were causing problems for the wardship policy then in vogue (Liberato, 2009). The group decided to leave Fazenda Guarani in 2003, as their leaders report, following an act of arson that devastated crops and water springs, and led to the suicide of a nearly 90-year-old cacique (chief), who was considered very important. Upon attempting to restart their lives in Ara\u00e7ua\u00ed, they found themselves threatened by the cold reality of poverty and marginalization, living as Indigenous migrants housed on the outskirts of the municipality.\r\n\r\nDetermined to seek new ways to survive\u2014since, according to testimonials, the Ara\u00e7ua\u00ed population looked upon them with suspicion, and the children suffered under the teaching methods of local public school teachers \u2014they decided:\r\n\u201cnot to wait in line for a decision from official government agencies, but to take out a loan from the Bank of Brazil (National Land Credit Program) and purchase our own land, incurring an initial debt to be paid over twenty years with income derived from the sale of traditional handicrafts\u201d (TO'\u00ca PANKARARU, as cited by Liberato, 2018).\r\n\r\nAlthough they received harsh criticism, including from other Indigenous people in the region, the group stood their ground. They believed that purchasing the land was a conscious exercise of their ethnic identity, necessary to achieve the means of guaranteeing the survival of their people, their sovereignty, and the (re)creation of their ancestral practices. Within the cultural horizon of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba, it is not possible to \"be Indigenous\" without a territory where material, cultural, and spiritual reproduction can take place (Rocha & Liberato, 2013).\r\n\r\nThe name of the village brings together elements linked to Pankararu religiosity (Cinta Vermelha or \"Red Belt\") and Patax\u00f3 struggles, as the jundiba tree (Ceiba pentandra) sheltered the family of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba paj\u00e9 (spiritual leader), Domingos Patax\u00f3, within its giant canopy during a historic massacre. The village's claims reflect a series of specificities that align with those of other Brazilian ethnic groups.\r\n

4. Research and Methodological Considerations<\/h2>\r\nThe longstanding relationship between the authors and members of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village started in 2005, when Ara\u00e7ua\u00ed was included as one of three sites for the project Building Capacity for Food Security in Brazil, led by Cecilia Rocha\u2014then director of the Centre for Studies in Food Security (CSFS), Ryerson University, Canada. In June 2006, the authors participated in the encounter Indigenous Youth: Exploring Identities through Food Security (Liberato, 2007), which invited members of the Pankararu and Patax\u00f3 peoples of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba, as well as Canadian First Nations Peoples, to collectively participate in several activities in and around Toronto. These included a Powwow, festive activities welcoming the arrival of summer, visits to the Six Nations reserve, the Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, and various social organizations, as well as a two-day meeting with university researchers and Canadian activists to discuss the relationship between identity and food.\r\n\r\nIn one of these activities at Trinity Bellwoods Park, Daniel, an Ojibwe man, caught the attention of Cacique To\u2019\u00ea Pankararu because he was serving strawberry juice. The two began a dialogue strongly marked by gestures, as they did not speak the same language (one spoke Portuguese, the other spoke English), and the symbolism of the food brought a complex communication system to the encounter (Liberato & Rocha, 2012). The Canadian explained to the Brazilian through gestures the meaning of the strawberry, a sacred fruit for his people because it \"teaches forgiveness, peace, is heart-shaped, and brings sweetness to the soul\" (Liberato, 2007).\r\n\r\nAt the university meetings, Ytxay Patax\u00f3 presented the Village\u2019s permaculture project, which was based on subsistence agriculture and ancestral knowledge, aiming to benefit life in all its forms, since wherever permaculture is practiced, it becomes a \"safe place for all beings\" (Mollison, 1990, p. 69).\r\n\r\nObserving how sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security (FNS) were at the core of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba\u2019s construction, Liberato (2009) sought to understand the initiatives of the Indigenous peoples of this village in their search for community FNS from a communicational and cultural perspective. That research project started with the 2009 documentary Food Security and Indigenous Culture in Brazil (34 min). Based on her initial findings, Liberato concluded that the village was establishing itself as a project of regional resistance and cultural emancipation. Despite suffering the negative impacts of colonization and so-called \"development\" projects (such as mining and logging in their region), the community was designed around reconstructing land, rebuilding culture, and strengthening life. Ultimately, food and nutrition security and food sovereignty played a vital role in this transformative process.\r\n\r\nLiberato continued and expanded her research with the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba on her doctoral dissertation (2018), which inquired about the role of food in expressing the identity of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba group, indicating the political, social, and cultural importance of preserving traditional methods of cultivating, preparing, and consuming food.\r\n

4.1 Why Participatory Video Methodology?<\/h3>\r\nPV (Participatory Video) is a methodology widely used in academic spaces in Canada since the 1980s and 1990s to study Indigenous and traditional communities. It seeks to foster a space for the protagonists to narrate their agendas of struggle to other subjects (Milne, Mitchell, & De Lange, 2012). It also presupposes minimal interference from the researcher and the equipment. Created in the late 1960s because of the need to listen to the social challenges experienced by fishing communities in Newfoundland, participatory video was important for recording the construction of the social scene and, above all, the lessons learned and agendas of struggle of the subjects involved.\r\n\r\nParticipatory video constituted an exact path for data construction for the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village research for three basic reasons: Orality, an integral part of the audiovisual record, was constitutive of the learning method considered appropriate by the village under study. Second, the filmed scenes offered a possibility for analysis that was more coherent with the perspectives of the subjects of the actions. Third, it enabled the researcher to choose her interpretation by inserting herself in the space where the narratives were enunciated and observing the routine of the research subjects.\r\n\r\nThrough this type of production, the village members could give visibility to their social agendas before public agencies and their network of allies. They could also build bridges with diverse communities, while strengthening their presence in political spaces and social forums (Shaw, 2012), as the video travels via the internet and on formats such as DVDs and hard drives.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_202\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1430\"]\" Figure 1.<\/em> Technical visit to the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village, 2012. Photo by the authors.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe construction of a field diary was important for taking notes during the interviews when the camera was on the tripod. The linking of the construction of narratives, knowledge, and practices of the different interviewees, face-to-face with the camera, assisted the researcher in composing the analysis, as community narratives intertwined. The camera framing helped the researcher scan panoramas and observe the details of the scenes. She grouped five blocks of files with video footage and photographs, which were represented in the community by words such as: territory, education, buen vivir (good living), food, medicinal plants, and communication.\r\n\r\nIn their participatory productions, the village leadership organized the production schedule based on the community's time and chose the locations for filming. During the interviews, the researcher did not formulate questions directly. Instead, the following opening keys for the sequences were used: What is your story? What is your greatest challenge? Where in that challenge do you currently find yourself? What is your greatest dream? What would you like to add?\r\nAs themes related to the analytical categories of the researchers\u2019 thesis emerged in the interviews, she inserted questions to explore aspects that would guide the study. After recording, the clips entered the audio transcription phase, taking an average of two hours to type out each recorded hour.\r\n\r\nNext, the material was assembled on a timeline using Final Cut software. At this editing stage, the collaboration between the researcher and the community took place through the evaluation of rough cuts (copi\u00f5es) uploaded with password protection to a YouTube channel. Through this digital platform, the community watched the videos and sent their comments.\r\nThe participatory videos originated positive audiovisual products, as they became a way of returning the research to the community. The first of them was recorded during the month of December (2014) and edited in January 2015, and is called \"A M\u00e3o do Paj\u00e9\" [The Shaman's Hand] (Liberato 2015, 15 min.). This video recorded the meeting of leaders and shamans held in the village, in which regional Indigenous groups, educational institutions, and students participated to debate the theme \"Water and Climate Change\". The second videographic work was Okh\u00e1 Kahab, recorded in April 2015 and edited in the months of May and June of the same year, but finalized in 2016. The documentary deals with the cultivation of medicinal plants in the village and aims to record the process of reclaiming ancestral knowledge related to Indigenous medicine, making it visible both to the members of the village and to the surrounding communities.\r\n\r\nAlthough the documentaries were important components for the construction of the researcher\u2019s thesis, they did not present the full analytical results. The footage allowed for the emergence of visual narratives necessary for comprehending the constructions of spaces, gestures, affects, expressions, tensions, contradictions, and even pedagogical silences. All of these elements were substantial for understanding the semantics and temporality of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village.\r\n

5. Key Principles and Values<\/h2>\r\n

5.1 Commensality, Reciprocity and Solidarity<\/h3>\r\nDespite the differences in their origins, the Pankararu and Patax\u00f3 founding groups of the CVJ village developed ways to unite the two cultures through practices related to food. Traditional foods in the distinct cultures of the two ethnic groups were central in the design of the community project.\r\n\r\nFrom the beginning, the new village created opportunities and spaces that would allow for cultural exchanges between the two ethnic groups through food. The Pankararu would introduce the Patax\u00f3 to a delicious dish of succulent boa constrictor barbecue or some fried caterpillars. Originating from the coast, the Patax\u00f3 presented the Pankararu their specialty of fresh fish smoked (roasted) inside banana leaves. The foods that were important to each ethnic group also influenced decisions about which fruit trees would be planted to revitalize the degraded soil on which they were constructing their future (Liberato, 2018).\r\n\r\nSeeking to escape the condition of living in cycles of poverty and needing help from outsiders, the CVJ members developed mechanisms of reciprocity and solidarity. These appear in the forms of collective food assistance, or mangute (in the Patax\u00f3 language). Families visiting each other are always welcomed with coffee, tea, and beiju (a manioc flatbread). In these encounters, they may also receive portions of fruits, vegetables, flour, fish, eggs, or free-range chicken to take home. These encounters are also important for sharing seeds and seedlings, as well as knowledge on how to plant and take care of them (Barbosa, 2025).\r\n

5.2 Permaculture and Agroecology<\/h3>\r\nBy articulating its own ways of accessing land, the village chose to develop work that prioritized soil restoration in Northern Minas Gerais\u2014an area highly degraded by livestock projects and mineral extraction\u2014by drawing on the practices of permaculture and agroecology. They gained access to these technologies through cultural exchanges, technical agronomy courses, and undergraduate university programs attended by their leaders. They affirm that they saw in these methods similarities with the practices of their \"elders\" (grandparents, parents, uncles, godparents, caciques, and paj\u00e9s) (Liberato, 2009).\r\n\r\nFood gives new meaning to the almost uninterrupted relationship of the community with nature, causing the perpetuation of a bond, of a sociability between them (Candido, 2003). Soon after purchasing the land in 2005, the Indigenous group chose to build an agricultural system based on permaculture, a \u201csustainable model of agriculture\u201d (Mollison, 1990, p. 69) and learn about methods of agroecology. Agrocology is understood as a practice that involves technological innovation resulting from both popular and academic knowledge. Strongly influenced in Latin America by the so-called Epistemologies of the South, agroecology must be cultivated \u201cthrough a process of decolonizing the cultural bias we inherited from European thought [...] and through a broader process of decolonizing the mind [...], questioning paradigms of progress, development, and competitiveness\u201d (Toledo, 2016, p. 44).\r\n\r\nThe leaders of the CVJ village saw permaculture and agroecology as reinvention of traditional Indigenous knowledge and their agricultural system. It reminded them of how their ancestors produced food (Liberato, 2018). Permaculture and agroecology allowed the village to link their cultural past, revering nature, with their future, preserving nature for their children. The leaders were confident and proud that they are building a life in which future generations can have sustainability, based on the knowledge that has been accumulated over centuries (Pankararu, 2004).\r\n\r\nThe territory, now expressed by a permaculture mandala, includes the foods that provide the minimum for life in a semi-arid region. The fruit trees of coconut, papaya, orange, tangerine, umbu, mangaba, jaboticaba, guava, pomegranate, and others frame the village\u2019s social space. The banana grove, which occupies a privileged area alongside the cassava, corn, and cowpea plantations, represents the foods that constitute traditional Indigenous recipes of the Pankararu and Patax\u00f3 peoples. There is also a large herbarium cultivated by the village, which exudes an aroma of medicinal plants such as rosemary, lavender, and mint (Liberato, 2018).\r\n

5.3 Buen Vivir<\/h3>\r\nIn 2012, the CVJ village \u201cdiscovered\u201d the Buen Vivir (Good Living). In the Buen Vivir, the CVJ leaders saw the philosophy that expressed their view of the world and the practices they have been following in building their community. The Buen Vivir gave coherence to how they wanted to live, and it provided a framework for continuing to construct the future.\r\n\r\nA legacy of the Andean peoples, Buen Vivir results from ancestral knowledge, ways of life, and practices centred on the coherence between \u201cwhat is said and what is done\u201d, and on a democratic construction cemented by the effort to strengthen Human Rights and the Rights of Nature (Acosta, 2016, p. 14). According to Choquehuanca (2009), a specialist in Andean worldview, Buen Vivir prioritizes life and the rights of nature; it respects differences and values communication, reciprocity, and consensus. Buen Vivir is about an Indigenous view of the world, reaching out for \u201cliving well\u201d and not necessarily \u201cliving better\u201d (see also Baniwa, 2013 and Munduruku, 2012).\r\n\r\nAccording to Acosta: \u201cOne cannot confuse the concepts of Good Living with that of \u2018living better\u2019, which implies a limited path to progress. Living better incites us to a permanent competition with our fellow human beings to produce more and more, in a process of endless material accumulation ... Let us remember that, so that some may \u2018live better\u2019, millions of people have had and have to \u2018live badly\u2019... Good Living signals an ethic of sufficiency for the entire community, and not only for the individual\u201d (Acosta, 2016, p. 90).\r\n\r\nThe concept of Buen Vivir emphasizes the strengthening of community and solidarity relations, common spaces, and the most diverse forms of collective living, respecting diversity and nature. It recognizes the diversity of peoples and their structures. It harmonizes the needs of the population with the conservation of life, biological diversity, and the balance of all life systems (Alcantara & Sampaio, 2017). The construction of Buen Vivir does not advocate radicalism or a return to the past. Much less does it deny modern knowledge, which can even contribute to its construction. Buen Vivir is based on a conception of civic coexistence among human beings, which demands a profoundly innovative diplomatic management to gain allies willing to defend a harmonious relationship with Nature, a proper noun, which has the right to exist (Acosta, 2016; Leff, 2016; Tortosa-Mart\u00ednez et al., 2014).\r\n\r\n\u201cKnowing how to eat\u201d is also one of the principles of Buen Vivir (Choquehuanca, 2009). It connects to the agrarian rites, marked by the practices of Indigenous elders, forging an expression of their position in the contemporary world. Following this principle, the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba people do not seek the clock of rapid production, but rather that which respects the best time to plant and harvest without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, supporting their choice of agroecology methods.\r\n\r\nThe pursuit of Buen Vivir has also been established in the CVJ territory through the social projects that the community carries out, which are favourable spaces for dialogue with other Indigenous groups in the region, governmental and non-governmental organizations, social movements, and national and international educational institutions. The CVJ village pursues a constant exchange of knowledge and experiences related to topics linked to ecological issues, traditional foods, medicinal plants, and religious rituals, considered by the individuals of the village to be important knowledge for their culture and spirituality.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_203\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1430\"]\"Ytxay Figure 2.<\/em> The Buen Vivir for the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village, 2012. Photo by the authors.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nYtxay Patax\u00f3, one of the founding leaders of the village, stated in 2012 that the group's intention was \"to plant a pedagogy of something great, through agriculture that would support food and nutrition security and Buen Vivir in the region\" (Ytxay Patax\u00f3, as cited in Liberato, 2018). Weaving together Buen Vivir through agrarian rites, reforestation, herbarium, their own forms of teaching and learning, as well as through social projects, the group has been inserting itself ethnically, ecologically, and politically in the Jequitinhonha Valley region.\r\n

6. Closing Notes<\/h2>\r\nThe journey of the CVJ in these past 20 years has not been a smooth one. On the contrary, the village has encountered many setbacks in the attempt to build a territory according to the Buen Vivir principles. Nevertheless, those principles have been their guidance to overcome barriers and get back to their own path. By creating spaces for transformation, the CVJ families worked from a dialogical perspective, engaging \u201cin the constant transformation of reality, in an encounter of men and women mediated by the world, transforming it and themselves\u201d (Freire, 1982, p. 43). The cultivation of food played an important role in this process, as it served as a bridge for the group to build reciprocities, knowledge, and re-signify practices.\r\n\r\nWorking with the CVJ village since 2005, researchers at the Centre for Studies in Food Security, Canada, witnessed that the community developed, and its members became leaders in the Indigenous Movement in Brazil. Many of their children pursued education in permaculture and agroecological methods, pedagogy, and environmental studies \u2013 continuing to contribute to the construction of Buen Vivir in their territory. Buen Vivir is the philosophy which most closely expresses their practices and desires for the future. It approaches their view of the world.\r\n\r\nAt the time we are writing, the community remains united in its struggle for \u201cjustice, memory and its future\u201d (Cultural Survival, 2025). Recently, the CVJ organized the occupation of Fazenda Cristal, a 560-hectare area, in order to prevent its sale for lithium mining. The families argue that this action forms part of a decades-long struggle for territorial expansion, which includes:\r\n\u25cf The establishment of a working group in 2012\r\n\u25cf The completion, in 2015, of a technical report supporting the creation of the CVJ Indigenous Reserve\r\n\u25cf The approval of parliamentary funding for land acquisition.\r\n\r\nAccording to the Brazilian anthropologist Edson Krenak (2023), the historical and geographical processes of colonization in the Jequitinhonha Valley, combined with ongoing conflicts involving the mining industry and agribusiness, have significantly delayed Indigenous land demarcation. Between 1970 and 1999, 541 mining titles were registered in the region. This number increased nearly tenfold to 5,068 titles between 2000 and 2018, with mining operations now occupying approximately 37,000 square kilometres. Beginning in 2018, Krenak argues, the Brazilian government suspended Indigenous land demarcation processes while granting additional mining licenses, intensifying extractive activity in the CVJ region.\r\n\r\nEven the symbolic dimension of the territory has been targeted. According to the collective Jequitinhonha Peoples, there have been proposals to rename the region \u201cLithium Valley,\u201d replacing its historical name. \u201cThey are trying to rename the area and erase our memory,\u201d a community leader stated. Mining companies promote the concept of \u201cgreen lithium,\u201d claiming environmentally and socially responsible extraction practices; however, according to Krenak, these claims are not supported by local realities (Krenak, 2023).\r\n\r\nAgainst this backdrop, CVJ\u2019s defense of territorial expansion constitutes not only a legal demand but an ontological claim. The envisioned \u201cSpace for the Pluriuniversity,\u201d grounded in the pedagogy of alternance, signals a project of epistemic re-centering. Rather than reproducing monocultural academic forms, the Pluriuniversity seeks to cultivate relational knowledge systems in which humans, land, and non-human beings are co-participants. This initiative reframes education as territorial praxis\u2014an infrastructure for sustaining Buen Vivir beyond the immediate present.\r\n\r\nThe CVJ\u2019s experience further demonstrates that community communication cannot be reduced to media production or participatory messaging alone. Rather, it operates as a bridge for the group and its re-existence: a sustained and embodied process through which the community narrates itself into being while cultivating food, medicinal plants, and the seeds used in its jewellery production. These practices are not ancillary economic activities but communicative acts that materialize memory, reciprocity, and territorial belonging. Through such relational labour, the community simultaneously organizes, educates, and defends its territory against the ongoing pressures of historical erasure.\r\n

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Choquehuanca, D. (2009). 25 postulados para entender el vivir bien<\/em>.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\r\n

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Grupione, L.G. ( 2006) Contextualizando o campo da forma\u00e7\u00e3o de professores ind\u00edgenas no Brasil. Forma\u00e7\u00e3o de professores ind\u00edgenas: repensando trajet\u00f3rias<\/em>. Bras\u00edlia: MEC; SECAD, Alfabetiza\u00e7\u00e3o e Diversidade, 2006, p.39-68.<\/p>\r\n

IBGE- Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estat\u00edstica. (2012) Os ind\u00edgenas no senso demogr\u00e1fico de 2010: primeiras considera\u00e7\u00f5es com base no quesito cor ou ra\u00e7a.[PDF]<\/a> Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\r\nIBGE- Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estat\u00edstica. (October 10, 2024) Censo 2022: Brasil tem 391 etnias e 295 l\u00ednguas ind\u00edgenas<\/em>.<\/a> Agencia IBGE de Noticias.\r\n

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Martino, L. (2002). De qual comunica\u00e7\u00e3o estamos falando? In A. Hohlfeldt, L. Martino, & V. Fran\u00e7a (Orgs.), Teorias da comunica\u00e7\u00e3o: Conceitos, escolas e tend\u00eancias<\/em> (pp. 11\u201325). Vozes.<\/p>\r\n

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Tortosa-Mart\u00ednez, J., Caus, N., & Mart\u00ednez-Rom\u00e1n, M. A. (2014). Vida triste y buen vivir seg\u00fan personas adultas mayores Otavalo, Ecuador.[PDF]<\/a> Convergencia: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 21<\/em>(65), 147\u2013169.<\/p>\r\n

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United Nations. (2007) Declara\u00e7\u00e3o das Na\u00e7\u00f5es Unidas sobre os direitos dos povos ind\u00edgenas. 107\u00aa Sess\u00e3o Plen\u00e1ria, 13 set. 2007. Rio de Janeiro: UNIC.<\/p>","rendered":"

Rita Simone Barbosa* & Cecilia Rocha<\/p>\n

*Corresponding author: ritasimonebr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

1.Introduction<\/h2>\n

How are food and communication related? According to Martino (2002), the word communication comes from the Latin communicatio. During the Middle Ages, cenobitic monks called communicatio the act of “taking the evening meal in common” (Martino, 2002, p. 13). The importance of the evening meal was not the act of “eating”, but of doing so “together with others”, promoting an encounter between those who remained isolated in their cells during the day. By breaking the isolation through eating together, the monks communicated, nourishing themselves not only with food, but also with the knowledge and senses that were exchanged in that space of flavours. Many other authors have pointed out the value of food as more than nourishment for the body, feeding also imagination and cultures (Barthes, 2008; Fischler, 1988).<\/p>\n

In this chapter, we examine how food has played a central communication role in the development of the Indigenous village Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba (CVJ) in Brazil. The CVJ village has a unique history. It emerged in 2005 as an experiment proposed by the leadership of groups from two different ethnic backgrounds, Pankararu and Patax\u00f3. The leaders of those two groups decided to buy land in the municipality of Ara\u00e7ua\u00ed, in the Jequitinhonha River Valley, where they would settle (initially as five families) and build a new community (Barbosa, 2025; Rocha & Liberato, 2013). Buying land was a bold (and controversial) decision, but essential in establishing a territory on which to construct the leaders\u2019 vision for the community. The land and the food produced there became essential for that construction.<\/p>\n

Food and, more specifically, the fight for food security, has been central to the village\u2019s development and its very identity. Food has served to communicate the village values between individuals, generations, and to the world. The village members\u2019 practices around food, their views on territory, their decisions on what to produce and how to produce it, all led them to Buen Vivir (Good Living).<\/p>\n

This chapter reflects on these values and their significance. It starts by providing an overall background of the context of Indigenous groups in Brazil, some recent gains and persistent struggles. The chapter then describes the methodology used in the PhD research (Liberato, 2018) that inspired this piece: the long-term relationship between the authors and members of the village Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba (CVJ), as well as the use of participatory video. Reflections on key values embraced by members of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village are discussed, involving Commensality, Reciprocity and Solidarity, Permaculture, and Buen Vivir, followed by final considerations. This chapter aims to be a contribution to the overall goal of understanding the process of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village in (re)constructing knowledge deemed ancestral, and articulating strategies for survival and dialogue with the national society, based on the educational, communicational, and Buen Vivir domains (Liberato, 2018).<\/p>\n

2. Brazilian Indigenous Context<\/h2>\n

In recent decades, various communities that self-identify as traditional have claimed the right to preserve their ways of life, cultural practices, and ways of thinking in the face of a globalized society. They organized and postulated their right to citizenship as a process of deconstructing exclusion .<\/p>\n

According to the Brazilian census, in 2022, there were 1,693,535 Indigenous people in the country, comprising 0.83% of the total population. Although this number represents only a fraction of the six million Indigenous people who inhabited the country in the 16th century (Grupioni, 2006), over the last few decades, there has been significant growth.<\/p>\n

In 1991, when the first statistical survey in the current model was conducted, the total Indigenous population was only 294,000 people; while in 2010 this number grew to 896,900 (IBGE, 2010). This growth has been attributed to an increased cultural awareness and improved survey methods, which now include previously inaccessible villages (Biller & Maisonnave, 2023).<\/p>\n

The Brazilian Indigenous population is divided into 391 ethnic groups, speaking 295 languages and living in villages and cities scattered throughout the national territory (IBGE, 2024).
\nAlthough most Indigenous people in Brazil now live in urban areas, corresponding to 53.97% or 914,746 people, many live in rural areas, corresponding to 780,090 people, or 46.03% of the total indigenous population in the country (IBGE, 2024). From those, 44% live in the North, and 31% live in the Northeast region of Brazil (IBGE, 2024). These regions have the country’s lowest Human Development Index (HDI) scores, lowest per capita incomes, and the highest poverty rates (Rodrigues & Silva, 2023).<\/p>\n

The increased Indigenous presence in Brazil has been called an ethnogenesis or re-ethnicization. In this process, \u201cIndigenous peoples who\u2014due to political, economic, and religious pressures, or because they were stripped of their lands and stigmatized for their traditional customs\u2014were forced to hide and deny their tribal identities as a survival strategy (thereby easing the hardships of prejudice and discrimination), are now reclaiming and recreating their Indigenous traditions\u201d (Baniwa, 2006, p.28).<\/p>\n

This growth did not necessarily result in the realization of the rights guaranteed in the 1988 Federal Constitution, which were won after a series of demands by Indigenous peoples and their allies. According to the constitution, “the social organization, customs, languages, beliefs, and traditions of Indigenous peoples are recognized, as well as their original rights over the lands they traditionally occupy” (Brasil, 1988, article 231). Furthermore, “Indigenous peoples, their communities, and organizations have legal standing to sue in defence of their rights and interests” (Brasil, 1988, article 232).<\/p>\n

This legislation reflected Brazil’s need to align itself with the global stage, where many nation-states\u2014faced with struggles for human and social rights\u2014affirmed the possibility for peoples to maintain their sociocultural practices through new legal and conceptual parameters. Following this path, in 2007, the country, along with 144 other nations, approved the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations, 2007), which reflects the demands of Indigenous groups across the globe.<\/p>\n

However, even though this range of official documents legally recognizes the rights of Indigenous peoples, three points remain crucial for ethnic groups to be able to “reclaim and recreate their traditions”: 1) the demarcation of lands; 2) public health and education policies that align with what the groups consider appropriate for themselves; and 3) a place of distinction within the formation of the national society (Baniwa, 2006).<\/p>\n

Despite being mentioned in the Constitution of 1988 (Brasil, 1988), the demarcation of Indigenous lands was only regulated in 1996 (Brasil, 1996). It involved nine complex stages permeated with bureaucratic intricacies. Depending on their specificities, lands were classified as traditionally occupied, Indigenous reserves, domain lands, or restricted lands (FUNAI, 2017). The course of demarcation required a series of documents and studies that moved through different levels within the specific timeframes of Brazilian public administration. Consequently, the national political landscape directly affected and continues to affect these processes.<\/p>\n

Anthropologist Maria Ros\u00e1rio de Carvalho, who has conducted significant research and possesses extensive experience in this field, states that today:
\n\u201cthere is an attempt\u2014not a subtle one, but a public one\u2014allied with agribusiness entrepreneurs and conservative sectors of Congress […] to undermine Indigenous rights […]. There is a powerful plot aimed first at delegitimizing Indigenous claims, especially regarding land, while also attacking ethnologists to project an image that they act unscrupulously by preparing what they call fraudulent reports. \u2018Inventing identities\u2019, as they claim\u201d (Carvalho, cited in Bento et al., 2016, p. 146).<\/p>\n

The stagnation of the demarcation of Indigenous lands was associated with armed conflicts between Indigenous people and large-scale landowners (latifundi\u00e1rios). In Mato Grosso do Sul, the Guarani-Kaiow\u00e1, hemmed in at the Dourados Reserve by soy and sugarcane monocultures, faced a homicide rate 400% higher than that of the state’s non-Indigenous population. Furthermore, the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (Brasil, 2018) warned that this area has the highest suicide rate in the country\u2014the majority committed by youth between the ages of 15 and 29\u2014recording 89.92 per one thousand deaths compared to a national average calculated in 2015 at 9.6. The states of Bahia, Par\u00e1, Paran\u00e1, Maranh\u00e3o, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina also show high levels of violence against Indigenous people.<\/p>\n

The violation of land rights generated various other forms of violence. For instance, the Guarani-Kaiow\u00e1 of Mato Grosso do Sul were deprived of cultivating medicinal plants and food for their own consumption. Children within this ethnic group were dying from malnutrition and permanent exposure to pesticides, which were sprayed by aircraft over the monoculture projects surrounding the reserve. This directly compromised the health and education of the group, especially children (Franceschini, 2016).<\/p>\n

Regarding access to education, the availability of Elementary and Middle schools for Indigenous children was 3.72 applicants per vacancy, while the average in the country was 1.23. This competition for spots was even more intense in High School. Leaders pointed out that community schools have inadequate physical structures and assessment methods that were ill-suited for teaching in villages. Thus, the school as a space for building societal relationships based on interculturality and political autonomy has been a primary demand of Indigenous communities (Brasil, 2007).<\/p>\n

In search of formal education, hundreds of young people migrate to cities to attend High School. Distant from their families, they face high-risk situations. This often includes compromising their Food and Nutritional Security (FNS), defined as \u201cthe realization of everyone\u2019s right to regular and permanent access to quality food, in sufficient quantity, without compromising access to other essential needs, based on health-promoting dietary practices that respect cultural diversity and are socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable\u201d (CONSEA, 2004, p. 04).<\/p>\n

As of 2022, there were approximately 70,000 Indigenous students enrolled in higher education institutions in Brazil, 29% enrolled in public universities and 71% in private institutions. This represents a significant increase from 11,400 in 2009, largely driven by the implementation of affirmative action policies and quotas (Loureiro, Carvalho & Rodrigues, 2024). The 2022 census further indicated that 56.1% of Brazil’s 1.69 million Indigenous people are under 30 years old, pointing toward a high potential for further growth in university enrolment (Agencia Brasil, 2024; UNESCO, 2025).<\/p>\n

However, despite higher enrolment, Indigenous students face high dropout rates, with only about 12% graduating between 2007 and 2017. Retention is often hindered by financial difficulties and a lack of specific support policies (Schmidt, 2025) and food insecurity (Bastos, 2014). In late 2025, the Brazilian government announced the creation of the first Federal University for Indigenous peoples (Unind) to further boost access and provide tailored education to strengthen traditional identities and knowledge (Loureiro, Carvalho & Rodrigues, 2024).<\/p>\n

Indigenous students are also affected by a stigma still widely prevalent in the country, which perpetuates prejudice against the ethnic and cultural diversity of these peoples\u2014viewed as “generic Indians” (Ribeiro, 1982) who supposedly indulge in laziness (Dantas, 1991). It is evident that, even with their rights recognized by legislation, Indigenous peoples experience discriminatory violations like those faced by various minority groups in the country seeking social consideration.<\/p>\n

3. The Emergence of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba Village<\/h2>\n

In this context, the village of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba brought together practices in the fields of education, food and nutritional security, and communication that made it unique in Brazil. It represented the first case in the country\u2019s history where two distinct ethnic groups, the Pankararu and the Patax\u00f3, joined together in the Jequitinhonha Valley to purchase 68 hectares of land. Their goal was to build a project that responded to the ways of life the community considers most appropriate for themselves.<\/p>\n

Migrants, the five families who established this village, departed from Fazenda Guarani (MG)\u2014a former prison established in the 1960s by the military regime to incarcerate individuals from various ethnic groups who, according to the authorities of the time, had committed criminal acts or were causing problems for the wardship policy then in vogue (Liberato, 2009). The group decided to leave Fazenda Guarani in 2003, as their leaders report, following an act of arson that devastated crops and water springs, and led to the suicide of a nearly 90-year-old cacique (chief), who was considered very important. Upon attempting to restart their lives in Ara\u00e7ua\u00ed, they found themselves threatened by the cold reality of poverty and marginalization, living as Indigenous migrants housed on the outskirts of the municipality.<\/p>\n

Determined to seek new ways to survive\u2014since, according to testimonials, the Ara\u00e7ua\u00ed population looked upon them with suspicion, and the children suffered under the teaching methods of local public school teachers \u2014they decided:
\n\u201cnot to wait in line for a decision from official government agencies, but to take out a loan from the Bank of Brazil (National Land Credit Program) and purchase our own land, incurring an initial debt to be paid over twenty years with income derived from the sale of traditional handicrafts\u201d (TO’\u00ca PANKARARU, as cited by Liberato, 2018).<\/p>\n

Although they received harsh criticism, including from other Indigenous people in the region, the group stood their ground. They believed that purchasing the land was a conscious exercise of their ethnic identity, necessary to achieve the means of guaranteeing the survival of their people, their sovereignty, and the (re)creation of their ancestral practices. Within the cultural horizon of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba, it is not possible to “be Indigenous” without a territory where material, cultural, and spiritual reproduction can take place (Rocha & Liberato, 2013).<\/p>\n

The name of the village brings together elements linked to Pankararu religiosity (Cinta Vermelha or “Red Belt”) and Patax\u00f3 struggles, as the jundiba tree (Ceiba pentandra) sheltered the family of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba paj\u00e9 (spiritual leader), Domingos Patax\u00f3, within its giant canopy during a historic massacre. The village’s claims reflect a series of specificities that align with those of other Brazilian ethnic groups.<\/p>\n

4. Research and Methodological Considerations<\/h2>\n

The longstanding relationship between the authors and members of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village started in 2005, when Ara\u00e7ua\u00ed was included as one of three sites for the project Building Capacity for Food Security in Brazil, led by Cecilia Rocha\u2014then director of the Centre for Studies in Food Security (CSFS), Ryerson University, Canada. In June 2006, the authors participated in the encounter Indigenous Youth: Exploring Identities through Food Security (Liberato, 2007), which invited members of the Pankararu and Patax\u00f3 peoples of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba, as well as Canadian First Nations Peoples, to collectively participate in several activities in and around Toronto. These included a Powwow, festive activities welcoming the arrival of summer, visits to the Six Nations reserve, the Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, and various social organizations, as well as a two-day meeting with university researchers and Canadian activists to discuss the relationship between identity and food.<\/p>\n

In one of these activities at Trinity Bellwoods Park, Daniel, an Ojibwe man, caught the attention of Cacique To\u2019\u00ea Pankararu because he was serving strawberry juice. The two began a dialogue strongly marked by gestures, as they did not speak the same language (one spoke Portuguese, the other spoke English), and the symbolism of the food brought a complex communication system to the encounter (Liberato & Rocha, 2012). The Canadian explained to the Brazilian through gestures the meaning of the strawberry, a sacred fruit for his people because it “teaches forgiveness, peace, is heart-shaped, and brings sweetness to the soul” (Liberato, 2007).<\/p>\n

At the university meetings, Ytxay Patax\u00f3 presented the Village\u2019s permaculture project, which was based on subsistence agriculture and ancestral knowledge, aiming to benefit life in all its forms, since wherever permaculture is practiced, it becomes a “safe place for all beings” (Mollison, 1990, p. 69).<\/p>\n

Observing how sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security (FNS) were at the core of Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba\u2019s construction, Liberato (2009) sought to understand the initiatives of the Indigenous peoples of this village in their search for community FNS from a communicational and cultural perspective. That research project started with the 2009 documentary Food Security and Indigenous Culture in Brazil (34 min). Based on her initial findings, Liberato concluded that the village was establishing itself as a project of regional resistance and cultural emancipation. Despite suffering the negative impacts of colonization and so-called “development” projects (such as mining and logging in their region), the community was designed around reconstructing land, rebuilding culture, and strengthening life. Ultimately, food and nutrition security and food sovereignty played a vital role in this transformative process.<\/p>\n

Liberato continued and expanded her research with the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba on her doctoral dissertation (2018), which inquired about the role of food in expressing the identity of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba group, indicating the political, social, and cultural importance of preserving traditional methods of cultivating, preparing, and consuming food.<\/p>\n

4.1 Why Participatory Video Methodology?<\/h3>\n

PV (Participatory Video) is a methodology widely used in academic spaces in Canada since the 1980s and 1990s to study Indigenous and traditional communities. It seeks to foster a space for the protagonists to narrate their agendas of struggle to other subjects (Milne, Mitchell, & De Lange, 2012). It also presupposes minimal interference from the researcher and the equipment. Created in the late 1960s because of the need to listen to the social challenges experienced by fishing communities in Newfoundland, participatory video was important for recording the construction of the social scene and, above all, the lessons learned and agendas of struggle of the subjects involved.<\/p>\n

Participatory video constituted an exact path for data construction for the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village research for three basic reasons: Orality, an integral part of the audiovisual record, was constitutive of the learning method considered appropriate by the village under study. Second, the filmed scenes offered a possibility for analysis that was more coherent with the perspectives of the subjects of the actions. Third, it enabled the researcher to choose her interpretation by inserting herself in the space where the narratives were enunciated and observing the routine of the research subjects.<\/p>\n

Through this type of production, the village members could give visibility to their social agendas before public agencies and their network of allies. They could also build bridges with diverse communities, while strengthening their presence in political spaces and social forums (Shaw, 2012), as the video travels via the internet and on formats such as DVDs and hard drives.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Rita
Figure 1.<\/em> Technical visit to the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village, 2012. Photo by the authors.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The construction of a field diary was important for taking notes during the interviews when the camera was on the tripod. The linking of the construction of narratives, knowledge, and practices of the different interviewees, face-to-face with the camera, assisted the researcher in composing the analysis, as community narratives intertwined. The camera framing helped the researcher scan panoramas and observe the details of the scenes. She grouped five blocks of files with video footage and photographs, which were represented in the community by words such as: territory, education, buen vivir (good living), food, medicinal plants, and communication.<\/p>\n

In their participatory productions, the village leadership organized the production schedule based on the community’s time and chose the locations for filming. During the interviews, the researcher did not formulate questions directly. Instead, the following opening keys for the sequences were used: What is your story? What is your greatest challenge? Where in that challenge do you currently find yourself? What is your greatest dream? What would you like to add?
\nAs themes related to the analytical categories of the researchers\u2019 thesis emerged in the interviews, she inserted questions to explore aspects that would guide the study. After recording, the clips entered the audio transcription phase, taking an average of two hours to type out each recorded hour.<\/p>\n

Next, the material was assembled on a timeline using Final Cut software. At this editing stage, the collaboration between the researcher and the community took place through the evaluation of rough cuts (copi\u00f5es) uploaded with password protection to a YouTube channel. Through this digital platform, the community watched the videos and sent their comments.
\nThe participatory videos originated positive audiovisual products, as they became a way of returning the research to the community. The first of them was recorded during the month of December (2014) and edited in January 2015, and is called “A M\u00e3o do Paj\u00e9” [The Shaman’s Hand] (Liberato 2015, 15 min.). This video recorded the meeting of leaders and shamans held in the village, in which regional Indigenous groups, educational institutions, and students participated to debate the theme “Water and Climate Change”. The second videographic work was Okh\u00e1 Kahab, recorded in April 2015 and edited in the months of May and June of the same year, but finalized in 2016. The documentary deals with the cultivation of medicinal plants in the village and aims to record the process of reclaiming ancestral knowledge related to Indigenous medicine, making it visible both to the members of the village and to the surrounding communities.<\/p>\n

Although the documentaries were important components for the construction of the researcher\u2019s thesis, they did not present the full analytical results. The footage allowed for the emergence of visual narratives necessary for comprehending the constructions of spaces, gestures, affects, expressions, tensions, contradictions, and even pedagogical silences. All of these elements were substantial for understanding the semantics and temporality of the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village.<\/p>\n

5. Key Principles and Values<\/h2>\n

5.1 Commensality, Reciprocity and Solidarity<\/h3>\n

Despite the differences in their origins, the Pankararu and Patax\u00f3 founding groups of the CVJ village developed ways to unite the two cultures through practices related to food. Traditional foods in the distinct cultures of the two ethnic groups were central in the design of the community project.<\/p>\n

From the beginning, the new village created opportunities and spaces that would allow for cultural exchanges between the two ethnic groups through food. The Pankararu would introduce the Patax\u00f3 to a delicious dish of succulent boa constrictor barbecue or some fried caterpillars. Originating from the coast, the Patax\u00f3 presented the Pankararu their specialty of fresh fish smoked (roasted) inside banana leaves. The foods that were important to each ethnic group also influenced decisions about which fruit trees would be planted to revitalize the degraded soil on which they were constructing their future (Liberato, 2018).<\/p>\n

Seeking to escape the condition of living in cycles of poverty and needing help from outsiders, the CVJ members developed mechanisms of reciprocity and solidarity. These appear in the forms of collective food assistance, or mangute (in the Patax\u00f3 language). Families visiting each other are always welcomed with coffee, tea, and beiju (a manioc flatbread). In these encounters, they may also receive portions of fruits, vegetables, flour, fish, eggs, or free-range chicken to take home. These encounters are also important for sharing seeds and seedlings, as well as knowledge on how to plant and take care of them (Barbosa, 2025).<\/p>\n

5.2 Permaculture and Agroecology<\/h3>\n

By articulating its own ways of accessing land, the village chose to develop work that prioritized soil restoration in Northern Minas Gerais\u2014an area highly degraded by livestock projects and mineral extraction\u2014by drawing on the practices of permaculture and agroecology. They gained access to these technologies through cultural exchanges, technical agronomy courses, and undergraduate university programs attended by their leaders. They affirm that they saw in these methods similarities with the practices of their “elders” (grandparents, parents, uncles, godparents, caciques, and paj\u00e9s) (Liberato, 2009).<\/p>\n

Food gives new meaning to the almost uninterrupted relationship of the community with nature, causing the perpetuation of a bond, of a sociability between them (Candido, 2003). Soon after purchasing the land in 2005, the Indigenous group chose to build an agricultural system based on permaculture, a \u201csustainable model of agriculture\u201d (Mollison, 1990, p. 69) and learn about methods of agroecology. Agrocology is understood as a practice that involves technological innovation resulting from both popular and academic knowledge. Strongly influenced in Latin America by the so-called Epistemologies of the South, agroecology must be cultivated \u201cthrough a process of decolonizing the cultural bias we inherited from European thought […] and through a broader process of decolonizing the mind […], questioning paradigms of progress, development, and competitiveness\u201d (Toledo, 2016, p. 44).<\/p>\n

The leaders of the CVJ village saw permaculture and agroecology as reinvention of traditional Indigenous knowledge and their agricultural system. It reminded them of how their ancestors produced food (Liberato, 2018). Permaculture and agroecology allowed the village to link their cultural past, revering nature, with their future, preserving nature for their children. The leaders were confident and proud that they are building a life in which future generations can have sustainability, based on the knowledge that has been accumulated over centuries (Pankararu, 2004).<\/p>\n

The territory, now expressed by a permaculture mandala, includes the foods that provide the minimum for life in a semi-arid region. The fruit trees of coconut, papaya, orange, tangerine, umbu, mangaba, jaboticaba, guava, pomegranate, and others frame the village\u2019s social space. The banana grove, which occupies a privileged area alongside the cassava, corn, and cowpea plantations, represents the foods that constitute traditional Indigenous recipes of the Pankararu and Patax\u00f3 peoples. There is also a large herbarium cultivated by the village, which exudes an aroma of medicinal plants such as rosemary, lavender, and mint (Liberato, 2018).<\/p>\n

5.3 Buen Vivir<\/h3>\n

In 2012, the CVJ village \u201cdiscovered\u201d the Buen Vivir (Good Living). In the Buen Vivir, the CVJ leaders saw the philosophy that expressed their view of the world and the practices they have been following in building their community. The Buen Vivir gave coherence to how they wanted to live, and it provided a framework for continuing to construct the future.<\/p>\n

A legacy of the Andean peoples, Buen Vivir results from ancestral knowledge, ways of life, and practices centred on the coherence between \u201cwhat is said and what is done\u201d, and on a democratic construction cemented by the effort to strengthen Human Rights and the Rights of Nature (Acosta, 2016, p. 14). According to Choquehuanca (2009), a specialist in Andean worldview, Buen Vivir prioritizes life and the rights of nature; it respects differences and values communication, reciprocity, and consensus. Buen Vivir is about an Indigenous view of the world, reaching out for \u201cliving well\u201d and not necessarily \u201cliving better\u201d (see also Baniwa, 2013 and Munduruku, 2012).<\/p>\n

According to Acosta: \u201cOne cannot confuse the concepts of Good Living with that of \u2018living better\u2019, which implies a limited path to progress. Living better incites us to a permanent competition with our fellow human beings to produce more and more, in a process of endless material accumulation … Let us remember that, so that some may \u2018live better\u2019, millions of people have had and have to \u2018live badly\u2019… Good Living signals an ethic of sufficiency for the entire community, and not only for the individual\u201d (Acosta, 2016, p. 90).<\/p>\n

The concept of Buen Vivir emphasizes the strengthening of community and solidarity relations, common spaces, and the most diverse forms of collective living, respecting diversity and nature. It recognizes the diversity of peoples and their structures. It harmonizes the needs of the population with the conservation of life, biological diversity, and the balance of all life systems (Alcantara & Sampaio, 2017). The construction of Buen Vivir does not advocate radicalism or a return to the past. Much less does it deny modern knowledge, which can even contribute to its construction. Buen Vivir is based on a conception of civic coexistence among human beings, which demands a profoundly innovative diplomatic management to gain allies willing to defend a harmonious relationship with Nature, a proper noun, which has the right to exist (Acosta, 2016; Leff, 2016; Tortosa-Mart\u00ednez et al., 2014).<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing how to eat\u201d is also one of the principles of Buen Vivir (Choquehuanca, 2009). It connects to the agrarian rites, marked by the practices of Indigenous elders, forging an expression of their position in the contemporary world. Following this principle, the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba people do not seek the clock of rapid production, but rather that which respects the best time to plant and harvest without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, supporting their choice of agroecology methods.<\/p>\n

The pursuit of Buen Vivir has also been established in the CVJ territory through the social projects that the community carries out, which are favourable spaces for dialogue with other Indigenous groups in the region, governmental and non-governmental organizations, social movements, and national and international educational institutions. The CVJ village pursues a constant exchange of knowledge and experiences related to topics linked to ecological issues, traditional foods, medicinal plants, and religious rituals, considered by the individuals of the village to be important knowledge for their culture and spirituality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Ytxay
Figure 2.<\/em> The Buen Vivir for the Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba village, 2012. Photo by the authors.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ytxay Patax\u00f3, one of the founding leaders of the village, stated in 2012 that the group’s intention was “to plant a pedagogy of something great, through agriculture that would support food and nutrition security and Buen Vivir in the region” (Ytxay Patax\u00f3, as cited in Liberato, 2018). Weaving together Buen Vivir through agrarian rites, reforestation, herbarium, their own forms of teaching and learning, as well as through social projects, the group has been inserting itself ethnically, ecologically, and politically in the Jequitinhonha Valley region.<\/p>\n

6. Closing Notes<\/h2>\n

The journey of the CVJ in these past 20 years has not been a smooth one. On the contrary, the village has encountered many setbacks in the attempt to build a territory according to the Buen Vivir principles. Nevertheless, those principles have been their guidance to overcome barriers and get back to their own path. By creating spaces for transformation, the CVJ families worked from a dialogical perspective, engaging \u201cin the constant transformation of reality, in an encounter of men and women mediated by the world, transforming it and themselves\u201d (Freire, 1982, p. 43). The cultivation of food played an important role in this process, as it served as a bridge for the group to build reciprocities, knowledge, and re-signify practices.<\/p>\n

Working with the CVJ village since 2005, researchers at the Centre for Studies in Food Security, Canada, witnessed that the community developed, and its members became leaders in the Indigenous Movement in Brazil. Many of their children pursued education in permaculture and agroecological methods, pedagogy, and environmental studies \u2013 continuing to contribute to the construction of Buen Vivir in their territory. Buen Vivir is the philosophy which most closely expresses their practices and desires for the future. It approaches their view of the world.<\/p>\n

At the time we are writing, the community remains united in its struggle for \u201cjustice, memory and its future\u201d (Cultural Survival, 2025). Recently, the CVJ organized the occupation of Fazenda Cristal, a 560-hectare area, in order to prevent its sale for lithium mining. The families argue that this action forms part of a decades-long struggle for territorial expansion, which includes:
\n\u25cf The establishment of a working group in 2012
\n\u25cf The completion, in 2015, of a technical report supporting the creation of the CVJ Indigenous Reserve
\n\u25cf The approval of parliamentary funding for land acquisition.<\/p>\n

According to the Brazilian anthropologist Edson Krenak (2023), the historical and geographical processes of colonization in the Jequitinhonha Valley, combined with ongoing conflicts involving the mining industry and agribusiness, have significantly delayed Indigenous land demarcation. Between 1970 and 1999, 541 mining titles were registered in the region. This number increased nearly tenfold to 5,068 titles between 2000 and 2018, with mining operations now occupying approximately 37,000 square kilometres. Beginning in 2018, Krenak argues, the Brazilian government suspended Indigenous land demarcation processes while granting additional mining licenses, intensifying extractive activity in the CVJ region.<\/p>\n

Even the symbolic dimension of the territory has been targeted. According to the collective Jequitinhonha Peoples, there have been proposals to rename the region \u201cLithium Valley,\u201d replacing its historical name. \u201cThey are trying to rename the area and erase our memory,\u201d a community leader stated. Mining companies promote the concept of \u201cgreen lithium,\u201d claiming environmentally and socially responsible extraction practices; however, according to Krenak, these claims are not supported by local realities (Krenak, 2023).<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, CVJ\u2019s defense of territorial expansion constitutes not only a legal demand but an ontological claim. The envisioned \u201cSpace for the Pluriuniversity,\u201d grounded in the pedagogy of alternance, signals a project of epistemic re-centering. Rather than reproducing monocultural academic forms, the Pluriuniversity seeks to cultivate relational knowledge systems in which humans, land, and non-human beings are co-participants. This initiative reframes education as territorial praxis\u2014an infrastructure for sustaining Buen Vivir beyond the immediate present.<\/p>\n

The CVJ\u2019s experience further demonstrates that community communication cannot be reduced to media production or participatory messaging alone. Rather, it operates as a bridge for the group and its re-existence: a sustained and embodied process through which the community narrates itself into being while cultivating food, medicinal plants, and the seeds used in its jewellery production. These practices are not ancillary economic activities but communicative acts that materialize memory, reciprocity, and territorial belonging. Through such relational labour, the community simultaneously organizes, educates, and defends its territory against the ongoing pressures of historical erasure.<\/p>\n

References<\/h2>\n

Acosta, A. (2016). O bem viver: Uma oportunidade para imaginar outros mundos<\/em> (T. Breda, Trad.). Autonomia Liter\u00e1ria; Elefante.<\/p>\n

Agencia Brasil. (May 3rd<\/sup>, 2024) Nearly 70% of residents on indigenous lands are under 30: New data cast light on the ageing profile of traditional peoples.<\/a> General News.<\/p>\n

Alc\u00e2ntara, L., & Sampaio, C. (2017). Bem viver como paradigma de desenvolvimento: Utopia ou alternativa poss\u00edvel?<\/a> Desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente, 40<\/em>, 231\u2013251.<\/p>\n

Baniwa, L.G. (2006) O \u00edndio brasileiro: o que voc\u00ea precisa saber sobre os povos ind\u00edgenas no Brasil de hoje. Bras\u00edlia: Minist\u00e9rio da Educa\u00e7\u00e3o; SECAD; Museu Nacional; LACED.<\/p>\n

Baniwa, L.G. (2013). Educa\u00e7\u00e3o para manejo do mundo: Entre a escola ideal e a escola real no Alto Rio Negro<\/em>. Contracapa; LACED.<\/p>\n

Barbosa, R. S. (2025). O bem viver numa aldeia menina: Estudo sobre comunica\u00e7\u00e3o, saberes e sabores ind\u00edgenas da Aldeia Cinta Vermelha-Jundiba<\/em>. ArtNer.<\/p>\n

Barthes, R. (2008). Toward a psychosociology of contemporary food consumption. In C. Counihan & P. Van Esterik (Eds.), Food and culture: A reader<\/em> (pp. 28\u201335). Routledge. (Original work published 1979).<\/p>\n

Bastos, C. (2014). Inseguran\u00e7a alimentar e nutricional e fatores associados em fam\u00edlias do n\u00facleo rural agr\u00edcola Lamar\u00e3o, no Distrito Federal. 2014. [Disserta\u00e7\u00e3o de Mestrado] Programa de P\u00f3s-gradua\u00e7\u00e3o em Nutri\u00e7\u00e3o Humana. Universidade de Bras\u00edlia, D.F.<\/p>\n

Bento, R. C., Bertolin, G.G., Danada, A., Lima, C. M. & Souza, F. A., S. (2016) Entrevista Maria Ros\u00e1rio Gon\u00e7alves de Carvalho[PDF]<\/a> Revista de Antropologia da UFSCAR<\/em>, v.8, n.2, jul\/dez, p. 131-135.<\/p>\n

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