Resistance of a traditional indigenous midwife towards contemporary medicine in her village: life narrative

Abstract

The process of pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period for indigenous women cuts across symbols, cultural practices, kinship and physiological processes, with midwives being important people in perpetuating the knowledge of their people. To strengthen these practices, public health policies must recognize the legitimacy of ancestral knowledge, as the hegemony of modern medicine silences and devalues it. It is important to understand the existing overlaps and negotiations of this knowledge because, on the one hand, midwives were subjected to formative processes of biomedical knowledge and, on the other, their knowledge was inserted into new epistemologies of care, in a dynamic and sociocultural process. To reflect on this reality, we created this article that presents the life narrative of an elderly indigenous midwife, a reference from the Potiguara people of Paraíba. To construct the narrative, an in-depth interview was carried out, analyzed based on health anthropology, which led to the construction of analytical categories that demonstrated the existence of an intention to colonize, not only the indigenous knowledge of midwifery, but being a woman midwife. in its territory. The field of politics was configured in the midwife's report as a possible strategy to be heard and to be a spokesperson for women in their needs, beyond labor and birth. In this sense, this life narrative highlights how important the traditional indigenous midwife is in the fight for decolonization, being an authentic “queen bee” of her people and protagonist of what we can understand as contemporary medicine.   Keywords: Traditional midwife; Indigenous Woman; Decolonization; Ancestry.