Snakebites from the standpoint of an indigenous anthropologist from the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

Conflicting attempts between indigenous caregivers trying to exercise their healing practices in hospitals have been recorded in the Brazilian Amazon. In this work, we present an interview with the Baniwa indigenous anthropologist Francy Baniwa. In an external and colonial interpretation, it was previously stated that indigenous people attribute the origin of snakebites as supernatural and that indigenous medicine, when it saves a patient from complications and death, has symbolic efficacy. In this interview, we observed that this form of interpretation is asymmetric because, for indigenous people, their understanding of nature is broader than ours, with more possibilities of ways of existence, including non-human entities as well or ill-intentioned as humans. The interaction of humans with these identities produces a form of existence with its own clinical reality, which is full of symbolism. Effective communication between health agents and indigenous patients and caregivers must undergo this exercise of otherness and interculturality.

Keywords: Anthropology; Antivenom; Indigenous populations; Interculturality; Public health; Snakebites.