This book reveals that the original peoples of the land we now call Brazil have long resorted to justice as one of the possible arenas for fighting against the advance of colonization over their bodies and territories. Anyone who is still surprised by indigenous lawyers defending their “relatives” in the highest courts in the country and the world should know that their ancestors had been filing lawsuits in colonial courts since at least the 18th century, appealing decisions if necessary until the matter was heard by the king of Portugal. These are the “captive litigants” described in these pages: indigenous people, mainly women, who went to the courts of the time with the aim of freeing themselves and their families from the slavery to which they were subjected in the regions of Pará and Maranhão - and, more often than not, they succeeded. With this award-winning research, Luma Ribeiro Prado sheds light on little-known issues in the history of ancestral peoples and the leading role of indigenous women in an incessant and admirable process of resistance to erasure.