Trees and plants: an ethnography of daily life in the black rural communities of Sertão of Northern Minas Gerais

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the relationship between the residents of the group of black rural communities in the city of Januária (MG) and plants. In rural areas of this city located in the Sertão of Northern Minas Gerais, people and plants coexist in the same landscape constructing and reconstructing, through daily activities, the dwelling space and the environment. Local residents use the term "histórica" refering to the relationship built with the environment over time. These relationships between people and plants suggest an approach that gives priority to an ethnography of daily life of the residents, where I can keep up with daily tasks related to forms of classification, cultivation, collection, use, ways of cooking and eating, trading and marketing of plants and derivative products. Through this approach, we hope to capture the most sensitive aspects of the way local residents think and relate to the plants, and how, from this relationship, rural communities think and produce other aspects of their lives, such as kinship and mariage or even a generating conviviality of belonging links between people. This project proposes to understand what plants say about the way of life, the "histórica" and the territoriality of rural black communities from Sertão in the Northern Minas Gerais.