Maria Fernanda Paes de Barros recounts how visiting the Pataxó territory fostered her transformation by offering her an Indigenous perspective on Brazil’s colonial history.

Can we be reborn without dying? I often say yes. To re-birth, we don’t need to cease to exist; we only need to detach ourselves from something that prevents us from evolving.

It’s a powerful sensation, one that took me a while to understand. It was November 2020, and the pandemic was still claiming countless lives around the world. I met the indigenous leader Arassari Pataxó through an online meeting set up by a common friend. I was doing research for a possible project and wanted to know more about the Pataxó people’s culture and their crafts. Arassari was receptive; he gave me some information, but I felt that they were a little superficial. This is why I was surprised when, a few minutes after we hung up, he texted inviting me to come to his village, Barra Velha, in southern Bahia. At first, I was confused. We were all living behind face masks, and indigenous territories were shut down to try to keep the COVID-19 virus away, but he reinforced the invitation, saying:

“I felt your soul, you have good energy. You can come, I know nothing bad will happen.”

Two weeks later, I arrived at Porto Seguro airport, and Arassari was waiting for me outside with his niece, Rayara, and his nephew, Caxi. It took us two hours to enter the Pataxó Territory, a land that has always belonged to them, but which still awaits official recognition from the Federal Government. At that moment, a part of me began to die without me even realising it. It was the beginning of intense days that shattered my naiveté regarding what I had been taught in school and which I had believed to be true all my life.

The Pataxó territory encompasses a vast area of ​​Atlantic Forest on the coast of Bahia, which includes Monte Pascoal, the point sighted by Portuguese colonisers 520 years earlier, when they mistakenly believed they had discovered a land that, in fact, already existed. Guided by Arassari Pataxó, I crossed rivers and mountains that were once traversed by the colonisers. I passed through the various villages scattered throughout the forest, where wattle and daub houses mingled with brick houses, telling us about the passage of time. I walked along the white sand beach where the first Catholic mass in Brazil was celebrated, and I heard, through Arassari’s words, the voice of all his ancestors telling me what that encounter truly was like.

A knot in my thoughts, a tightness in my soul, a queasiness in my body, as if I were disintegrating.

It was the story of my own country, but one that I had never heard. A narrative passed down orally for over five centuries by those who first welcomed the Portuguese in a land once called Pindorama (land of Palms). It is difficult to translate the sensation. A knot in my thoughts, a tightness in my soul, a queasiness in my body, as if I were disintegrating. A feeling of unease that stayed with me for weeks, and which, as I understood and absorbed the lessons and feelings, gradually gave way to a lightness, as if my whole body were enveloped in light.

Part of me was left in that territory, in the mud walls that dissolve with the passage of time, in the sand of the beach that is renewed by the ebb and flow of the sea waves, in the raindrops that sow life in the forest and feed the rivers, in the land that was traversed by the Portuguese and that resisted through the determination of a people who have so much to teach us. I was reborn. Much more Brazilian than I’ve ever been, much more attentive to silenced stories, and determined to share those stories so that others, too, can experience a similar rebirth.

I shared all these emotions and sensations through the work “Passagem”. It tells a story of countless journeys, of resistance and resilience, of courage and generosity. I brought its clay from the Pataxó’s territory, where I learned to work it with Arassari’s family, anchoring my soul and erasing borders. Together we trod the clay in rhythmic movements, carrying it as if it were the essence of life. Together, we reinforced the structure of ancient wattle-and-daub houses. Together, we strengthened bonds of respect and trust. Together, we shaped the steps of a new story, this time told by all.

“Passagem” embodies this clay, this strength, this energy. It stands upright, much like the Pataxó people. It opens a window, inviting us to see others, their perspective, the other side of so many stories. It carries seeds brimming with the possibility of life and the promise of the future. With time, it will gradually crumble, allowing the rain to wash away its layers and, with them, the rigid marks that have shaped and limited our perception of reality.

There is so much that we don’t know. So much that reaches us is distorted, fragmented, and biased. It takes courage to hear what is often left unsaid, to see what they don’t want us to see, sometimes that requires letting a part of us die. But it’s worth it, because that’s how we are reborn into life as it truly is.

Maria Fernanda Paes de Barros ✿ A heartfelt designer for Brazil's ancestors

Maria Fernanda Paes de Barros shares stories of primal voices in Brazilian culture, which she translates into objects for use today. 

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Brazil | ceramics | G41 | Maria Fernanda Paes de Barros