Maíra Fernandes de Melo

Maíra Fernandes de Melo, True Powerful Earth (pronouns she/it), is a Brazilian journalist, scholar, poet, activist, and Order of Interbeing member. Born in the lands of Tupinambás, Rio de Janeiro, surrounded by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the mountains of the Atlantic Forest, she has also lived in Argentina, land of Guaraníes, where the dense stream of the Paraná River embraced her body. She has Indigenous (Potiguara and Puri) and European (Portuguese and Spanish) human ancestors, and is a daughter of Oxóssi, Orisha of the forests in Brazilian Candomblé.