LAUSR

The objective of this article is to perform an ethnography of maps through a critical reflection on an ethnomapping process realized with the Potiguara indigenous people. The ethnomapping in the Potiguara lands was proposed by Funai as a way of identifying and describing conflicts involving the practice of shrimp farming and sugarcane plantation, as well as the overlap between conservation reserves and the indigenous territory. Our objective was to build relational spaces based on ethnography and participatory mapping techniques, combined with the use of geotechnologies. We argue that maps, even if they do not correspond to the forms of mapping of many indigenous peoples, if constructed in a way that respects the symmetries between practices of knowledge, are powerful instruments for intercultural dialogue, which is usually asymmetrical. We have observed, first of all, that, like other maps produced in the region, the process of ethnomapping was reoriented by the Potiguara people as a weapon for territorial demand — a process of "cartographophagy", where the cartography tecnoscience were absorved and treated as "indigenous maps".