The Indigenous community of the Catu people (Potiguara ethnicity) is located in two different municipalities: Canguaretama and Goianinha. According to the leader Cacique Luiz Catu, the Catu came from the former Indigenous village Igramació in the 18th century, walking through a dense forest from Sibaúma and Barra do Cunhaú to the source of the river.
Nowadays the community has 142 families and a population of 726 Indigenous self-declared. Agriculture is the predominant economic activity. The Potiguara of Catu people use the fertile soil of the region for growing food for their own consumption and for selling on local markets. They farm beans, corn, manioc and, mostly, sweet potato. Hunting and fishing, that once were their main activities, are now left aside due to the massive deforestation caused by cane plantations which have been competing for properties on Indigenous lands since the beginning of the colonial period and the interethnic relations between Europeans and Indigenous. Harvesting fruits such as mangaba is also an activity that has been affected by socio-environmental conflicts.
Just like the Amarelão Chestnut Festival and the Sagi-Trabanda Corn Festival, the Potato Festival is held every year by the Potiguara of Catu people on the 1rst of November during the “Dia de Todos os Santos” celebrations. This is an event that represents the Indigenous strength and capacity to build relations with different institutions, groups and get over adverse situations, such as the necessity of transforming hunting and harvesting habits into an agricultural way of living. This aspect was brought up by a speech said on the Potato Festival of 2018 by the leader Cacique Luiz and Canina, a local tourist guide, when both reported that the difficulty of finding mangaba and other native fruits are getting bigger every day due to the monoculture and local deforestation.
The Indigenous habits from the past and the present are approached on Potiguara of Catu Indigenous school education, which is the only Indigenous school of RN officially recognized by the Education Ministry (MEC). As Cacique Luiz reports, this recognition took eight years to be obtained. Tupinambá language is studied with the children of the Municipal Indigenous School João Lino Silva as a sociolinguistic effort to strengthen the identity of the Potiguara of Catu people. “Catu” means “good”, “pleasant”; “canguaretama” means "cemetery”, “bone territory”. According to Cacique Luiz, this is a reference of the Indigenous fight and resistance. The cosmogony of the community is also evoked on the Toré studied and practiced with the students. The oral history is a fundamental process of learning on Catu Indigenous education. Every month the moon ritual is practiced and everyone gathers in the forest or in a house of some Indigenous relative to exchange experiences, dance and sing Toré. The body paintings also represent the ethnic reaffirmation of the group. The plants currently used in the ink preparation are “jenipapo” and “urucum”. The darkest colors are used in battle or protest moments and the lighter and softer ones are used in moments of celebration. The most common animals symbolized on the paintings are the fish, the jabouti and the snake.