PHOTOS AND STORY BY TRISTAN MAHER
On the edge of Porto Alegre, population six million, a small group of Kaiganges Indian families have grown accustomed to city life while trying to maintain their heritage.
At morning’s light, the hard rains of the night before have ceased. The breeze, cool like the gray sky, descends the hillside.
Seven-year-old Maieli Sales, dressed in a pink skirt and white sequined top, emerges from behind the worn, weathered wood of her home. She carefully begins to descend the hillside, feet bare, as water flows down a dirt path.
Marcia da Silva Kanheiro, 21, makes her living selling baskets made of vines and bamboo, as well as beaded necklaces, in the nearby city. She earns the equivalent of about $28 U.S. dollars.
Back at her tiny village, Da Silva Kanheiro spends her time making the items she sells in town. She is eight months pregnant with her second child and has been twice married and divorced.
“There are some that accept (divorce) and some that don’t. In the reservation, they try and talk you out of it.“
The crafts that help maintain the community’s livelihood have no traditional connection to her culture. It is merely a way to make a living, she says. Some weeks we sell more and some weeks we sell less.”