In ancient Tupi, the Tupinambá language, Ka’a Pûera – or capoeira – are places used for planting crops. After the harvest, these spaces are left to rest, thus creating a place with lower vegetation, a regenerated forest. At first glance, this space may seem infertile and inhospitable, but it is in the capoeira that there is also a great variety of medicinal plants. Where there is apparently no life, there is the possibility of resurgence: with the soil recovering, it can soon become new plots for the community’s livelihood or a new forest.

Capoeira is also a small bird that flocks together in dense forests, with brown, orange, and gray feathers that provide camouflage on the forest floor. These are survival strategies against predators to defend their territories – and they are similar to the struggle of the Indigenous peoples, who are like Ka’a Pûera, birds that walk in forests that resurface.