ABSTRACT Amid contemporary debates on decolonial ecologies and traditional knowledge, it is essential to understand how historically marginalized communities articulate the interconnections among territory, nature, and cultural practices. This study seeks to understand the existence of a sentipensante relationship — from the Spanish sentipensar, a way of knowing in which thought and feeling flow as one — between quilombola women, the soil on which they build their lives, and their agricultural practices. It explores how three women from different generations, from the urban Adelaide Maria Trindade Batista Quilombola – one of the quilombo communities formed by enslaved, free, or freed black people, in the first half of the 19th century - located in Palmas, Paraná, Brazil, perceive and interact with the soil of their gardens and backyards. The research examines how this bond becomes evident in their perceptions, narratives, daily cultivation practices, and in the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. Rooted in ethnographic methodology and a qualitative approach, the study draws on personal communications, recorded in audio and captured in field notes and later organized and interpreted through content analysis. The findings suggest that the connections between quilombola women, the soil and its cultivation are deeply embedded in their history, culture, identity and sense of belonging. Their work with the soil and agricultural practices is an expression of intimacy with the earth, an act of cultural resistance, and a preservation of ancestrality — a relationship that is, in its essence, sentipensante.
Prado et al. (Thu,) studied this question.