As Políticas públicas para a saúde indígena e a política de saúde das mulheres Kaiowá da reserva de Amambai, MS: aproximações e impasses

Abstract

This dissertation is the result of a research project analyzing the health practices of indigenous women and the transformations set off by the arrival of the public healthcare system currently in charge of healthcare delivery to the indigenous populations. I am putting emphasis on the importance of the work of the Guarani and Kaiowá women faced with this change, the resistance that always persisted on the reservation which insisted on keeping the traditional practices despite the difficulties caused by the public healthcare system. In the case of the reservation of Amambai, attention to the health of its indigenous population is given from its demarcation in 1915; with the SPI, FUNAI, FUNASA, and SESAI, in chronological order. I will present the group of women called Kuña Puru’a Rye Guasu, organised around the fight for humanized birth, which is one of the principal themes of this dissertation. The participation in this group inspired me to study indigenous health practices and the importance of the role of the Guarani and Kaiowá women in the effort to stitch together or connect pharmaceutical knowledge with the traditional knowledge which has been kept alive by the indigenous women using this healthcare system. I identify and discuss the modifications of the system of care practices following the installation of the administrative organs for the delivery of healthcare to the indigenous population which brought a new model of health monitoring. I ask myself to which extent interdisciplinarity takes place in the practices of the two healthcare systems – the indigenous and the governmental systems. I depart from the hypothesis that the two systems are separate, and that coexistence between them is tense and problematic. The process of this research strives to demonstrate how indigenous women keep a protagonist role in healthcare practices, even within the limitations and embarrassments of different kinds.