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“How do we prove to you that we are fighting for a good future for everyone? How do we prove to you that if we implement the National Indigenous Truth Commission this will be good for society as a whole, because we will be revealing hidden truths not only about indigenous peoples, but about Brazilian history?”

It was with this question that Maíra Pankararu, one of the most prominent voices on the topic of transitional justice, memory and reparation for indigenous peoples, stressed the importance of the Brazilian State continuing investigations into human rights violations initiated by the National Truth Commission (CNV) in 2013 and that civil society also becomes aware and engaged in the issue.

Months earlier, in April 2024, in Brasília, Maíra Pankararu had made her name as the first indigenous person responsible for reporting a request for collective reparations to indigenous people at the Amnesty Commission. Remember. 

An indigenous member of the Pankararu people and a lawyer, Maíra graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), one of the oldest in the country; specialized in Social Rights and Public Policies from the Frassinetti Faculty of Recife (FAFIRE); and has a master's degree from the University of Brasília (UnB).  

Despite living in Brasília, she considers herself a country person. “I like the slow pace, the peaceful rhythm, I don’t like noise.”

Maíra is the second of four children, born in Tacaratu, a municipality in the hinterlands of Pernambuco where more than a third of the population is also indigenous, according to data from the 2022 Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). There, she was raised with her relatives in the village of Brejo dos Padres, in Pankararu Indigenous Land. 

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If there is an African proverb that says it takes an entire village to raise a child, Maíra argues that you don’t have to go far to see this proven. “This happens here. The Pankararu people live this. In my childhood, I lived this”. 

She remembers that she spent every day playing with her cousins ​​in the village and only returned at dusk. “Everyone took care of the children, because it is everyone’s responsibility there. So for me, it was a privilege, but I only understood what a privilege it was when I left, when I was already an adult,” she recalled. 

What was a privilege for her did not last long. When she was just five years old, her family had to leave the village where they lived so that Maíra and her siblings could have a quality education. 

The situation highlighted the racism in society against the indigenous population. At a time when access to university was limited, her mother, Bethe, even with a higher education degree, could not find a job in the region. It was only in the municipality of Custódia, 245 km away from her homeland, that her family was able to settle and her mother was finally able to work as a teacher. 

At the age of 17, in 2009, Maíra had to go even further. Alone, in the capital of her state, Recife, she enrolled at UFPE. At the time, the discussion about ethnic-racial quotas did not yet have the force of a federal regulation such as Law 12.711, known as the Quota Law, which would only be sanctioned three years later, in 2012.

“It was a very unique moment. There were no indigenous people where I was, so there was no way to look around and see another indigenous person and share certain anxieties, desires and difficulties,” he recalled. 

Despite believing that indigenous students currently continue to experience the same situations of racism and pressure that she experienced 15 years ago, Maíra sees the increase in indigenous presence in universities as a positive thing and highlights the important role, and in contrast, the great responsibility of the generations that, like her, were the first indigenous people to graduate.  

“I look at people like my uncle, Paulo Pankararu; Joenia Wapichana; Eloy Terena; Samara Pataxó; Fernanda Kaingang, and I see how difficult it was for them. That’s why when I see the new generations and see how strong they are, I’m very happy and I do whatever I can to help them,” he said. 

In the footsteps of other women

To continue, Maíra finds strength in the example of women like her mother and grandmother, whom she describes as “forces of nature”. “Pankararu women are strong, they are warriors. I am privileged to be surrounded by women like that”. She also mentions her aunt, Maria das Dores Pankararu, the first indigenous woman to earn a doctorate in Brazil, as well as Quitéria Binga, an important leader in the fight for education and the demarcation of the Pankararu people’s Indigenous Lands. 

In politics, she admires Sonia Guajajara's performance: “the position she holds today is very difficult to hold, but she manages to do it in a diplomatic way, with great subtlety and with a very beautiful and strong way of doing politics”. 

Célia Xakriabá, with whom she worked for a year, also appears as a reference of strength. “I lived very close to Célia and saw everything she goes through, all the types of racism she experiences in the Chamber. And yet, she is a woman who makes poetry out of everything. She is an example to me of a woman from the Cerrado.”

The first indigenous person on the Amnesty Commission

Maíra became a lawyer in 2015; she passed the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB) exam on the first try; she did an exchange program in Australia to improve her English; she completed a postgraduate degree; and in 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, she was selected for the Master's degree in Law at UnB. 

If during the pandemic Maíra thought her future would be in the backlands of Pernambuco, the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the Presidency, in 2022, changed everything. 

After working as a legal advisor for federal deputy Célia Xakriabá (PSOL/MG), Maíra was invited to be the first indigenous advisor to the Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship (MDHC). She received the invitation from her master's advisor and the newly appointed president of the Amnesty Commission at the time, Eneá Stutz. “None of this ever crossed my mind,” she says.

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The Commission is a Brazilian government agency created by decree in 2002, responsible for judging and establishing policies for reparation and remembrance for victims of human rights violations. During the Bolsonaro administration, the agency, under the leadership of the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights of Damares Alves, summarily denied several amnesty requests. 

It was only under the new administration that these cases could be reviewed and the possibility of collective reparation requests was institutionalized – previously, they were restricted to individuals. It was in this context that Maíra took one of the seats as a councilor and was the rapporteur of the people's case. Guarani Kaiowá da Guyraroká Indigenous Land, victims of violations such as forced removal from their lands, attempted extermination and social disintegration. 

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The session that judged the first collective amnesty requests also included other innovations, such as recommendations to the federative entities, for example, that the Union demarcate the Guyraroká Indigenous Land. “It is an attempt to help within the Amnesty Commission’s powers so that these rights that already belong to indigenous peoples are guaranteed,” explains Maíra. 

In addition to her work on the Commission, after a year working as a parliamentary advisor, Maíra Pankararu also served as an advisor to the president of the Superior Labor Court (TST), Lelio Bentes Corrêa, from 2022 to 2024. Regarding her time at the court, she emphasizes the importance of social minorities, like her, occupying positions to think about how issues directly affect these populations. However, she does not disregard the loneliness of this place. “It is a challenging place, I was the only indigenous woman, but I think other minorities also feel this way a little bit.” 

“It’s hard to go to some places and have to explain, for example, that you might not understand some relatives because Portuguese is not their first language, that they had to leave there, come to this white world to speak fluent Portuguese and here they are, speaking as equals, and you still complain about the fluency?” he asks. “It’s because of the embarrassment. Obviously it’s educational, but it hurts us,” he adds. 

Maíra no longer holds positions in the Commission or the TST, but the greatest lessons learned along her career came precisely from the need to leave her village to live in the non-indigenous world. “It was a hard lesson to understand that it is okay to live in other places, to be a foreigner in other places. I just hope that my relatives and I will be well received when we are foreigners in places where we do not belong,” she concludes.