The 2025 Demographic Census revealed an increase in Indigenous peoples and languages in Brazil. Included in this list is the Lanawa people, whose history has been marked by stigmatization and the erasure of their identity. Despite this, orally transmitted memories have allowed for their resistance.
According to themselves, the Lanawa descend from the Bahuana and Ciriano, peoples decimated by epidemics. They reorganized themselves, forming their own identity, with common practices. Today, the survival of the Lanawa identity is linked to their leader, Chief Alvanira Palmela.
The inclusion of the Lanawa in the census represents progress, but it only reveals part of their existence. Identity is not limited to an administrative act: it is — like the raw sap that flows from the roots to the branches to make a tree flourish — a feeling that transcends generations and sustains an understanding of the world.
This understanding permeates my journey as a photographer in the Amazon region, where family gaps and lost stories show that identity is something that is sought, affirmed, and recreated. I grew up surrounded by narratives and silences that shaped my own perspective. The gaps concerning my origins—the disappearance of my ancestors' surname, the voids left by the deaths and violence that marked the region—became the driving force of my work. In this work, I seek to align my photography with the voices of this struggle. It is a way to heal the absences, listen to what remains, and participate in the reconstruction of a collective memory full of gaps in the territory where I was born and chose to live.
