The Potiguara of Sagi/Trabanda people inhabit the south end of the coast of Rio Grande do Norte state, in the district of Baía Formosa. The community has 159 families and a population of approximately 453 Indigenous who subsist on artisanal fishing, harvesting, farming beans, potato, manioc and corn and also touristic activities. Every year in the month of June the communitie celebrate the Corn Festival, in reverence to the harvest time of this cereal which has been cultivated in America for thousands of years. This event brings together students from the region, Indigenous from other villages of Rio Grande do Norte and their relatives Potiguara of Paraíba, from whom they are separated only by the geopolitical frontier between these two states. The Potiguara of Sagi/ Trabanda maintains kinship relations within the Potiguara of Paraíba inhabitants of Baía da Traição, Marcação and Rio Tinto, from where many families migrated in the end of 19th and throughout the 20th centuries.
The resistance of this Indigenous group, such as in many communities of Brazilian North East, is not only related to the demand for recognition of their distinct identity, but also to their survival and the pursuit of ethnic rights considering that they are constantly being threatened by economic and business interests. Since 2007, the Potiguara of Baía Formosa coast fight to remain in their traditionally occupied territory which have been disputed by companies seeking for the touristic potential of the region and by sugar cane plantations.
The Potiguara of Sagi/ Trabanda people live surrounded by cane fields which, besides spoiling the soil and the water with agrochemicals, also deforest, set fires and raise socio-environmental conflicts, harming the good living of the communitie with the destruction of their plantings and life-threatenings.
The territorial demarcation process of the communities of Rio Grande do Norte was initiated in 2015 in Sagi/Trabanda village, with the consent of the Indigenous movement, due to the constant threats this Potiguara people have been facing through the years.
“Potiguara are warriors, Potiguara warriors are what we are meant to be! We war on land and war on sea, Potiguara warriors are what we are meant to be”. This piece of song [ponto de Toré Potiguara] is sung in Sagi village. It is through the strength, the capacity to fight, to resist and recreate strategies for living in community that the Sagi-Trabanda people presents themselves to the contemporary political world: “The Caracará King and the Jandui King are here, the Trabanda people are here, the Trabanda people are here!”.
Besides that, over the last decade the tourist activity has been boosted by the community members providing, above all, the sale of food and handcrafted objects.