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HomeNumeriAnno XXVIII, n. 27 (1)Salute e intrecci più-che-umaniIndigenous Women’s Politics of Ca...

Salute e intrecci più-che-umani

Indigenous Women’s Politics of Care: Human and medicinal plants vital connections in the Caititu Land, Brazilian Amazon

Politiche di cura delle donne indigene: connessioni vitali tra esseri umani e piante medicinali nella Terra di Caititu, Amazzonia brasiliana
Markus S. Enk e Luciana Kind

Abstract

In questo articolo descriviamo la creazione di letti di piante officinali nell'ambito del progetto Takatxi Nhipukutximyna nella Terra Indigena di Caititu, situata nella regione di Purus, nell'Amazzonia brasiliana. Basato su una ricerca etnografica e narrativa condotta tra il 2023 e il 2024, l’articolo analizza come le pratiche delle donne indigene con le piante medicinali sfidino i paradigmi antropocentrici della salute, rivendicando al contempo uno stile di vita indigeno. Descriviamo come piante come la ruta (arruda) ricambino la cura umana offrendo protezione e guarigione alle comunità umane e vegetali. L'alleanza essere umano-pianta sostiene l’interdipendenza tra il benessere umano e quello vegetale interagendo con i proprietari della natura, esseri che proteggono l'ambiente e i suoi abitanti. Basandoci sul contesto postcoloniale della nostra ricerca, suggeriamo l'intersezionalità e le prospettive indigene per fornire nuove interpretazioni dei quadri multispecie della salute relazionale.

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1. Introduction1

  • 1 We thank WMPC in the Caititu Land and the spouses, who authorized this research and shared with us (...)
  • 2 The WMPC is composed of 16 women who are part of the SAFs Collective: one Jarawara, one Paumari, on (...)

1At the 2024 meeting of the Agroforestry Systems (SAFs) Collective of the Indigenous Caititu Land organized by the Indigenous Producers Association of the Caititu Land (Associação dos Produtores Indígenas da Terra Caititu, APITC) together with the NGO Native Amazônia Operation (Operação Amazônia Nativa), indigenous women declared the establishment of their own Women’s Medicinal Plants Collective (WMPC)2. They urged men to endorse their efforts, elucidating the direct influence of their alliance with medicinal plants on the community's welfare. The first author participated in the meeting as both an ethnographer and APITC’s consultant, congratulating the women for their initiative. He acknowledged that, since the medicinal plantbed project started, public discussions concerning spirituality and its relation to plants were emerging stronger among the indigenous inhabitants. As a reply, a woman shared that biomedicine had not succeeded in curing her severe illness. In accordance with her indigenous Apurinã sciences, she had ceased to eat and was ready to transition to the other world. Her ancestors manifested in a dream to reveal plants that could facilitate her healing. The following day, her daughter sought permission from spiritual guardians of the forest to collect specific plants. She stated that this spiritual guidance was crucial for her survival, although she refrains from imparting this indigenous knowledge to avert its misuse by non-indigenous people.

  • 3 ‘Owner-of-nature’ is a specific term that appeared in our fieldwork, along with ‘chief-spirit.’ Deb (...)
  • 4 The neighboring indigenous Paumari designate their shaman as arabani (see Bonilla 2005). In the Cai (...)

2In this paper, we argue that indigenous women and their spouses engage in the Caititu Land with medicinal plants as allies in healing processes rather than as instruments or chemical compounds. Despite the influence of Christianization and urbanity in the territory’s peri-urban fringe, these relational practices contest anthropocentric health paradigms and highlight an interdependence between human and plant vitality. Plants are nurtured with meticulous care akin to child-rearing, acknowledged as having a spiritual interiority. Even so, the women’s narrative highlights a relationship to owners-of-nature (chief-spirits3) instead of human-plant kinship. These spiritual beings live in the forest and protect the ones they control, entangled with plantbeds and potentially influence human health. Arruda (rue, herb of grace, genus Ruta), recognized as a chief-plant in plantbeds, illustrates how medicinal plants serve as healing allies, known for their ability to protect human caretakers from arabani4 (sorcery) and the medicinal plantbed from mau-olhado (evil-eye).

3Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken from 2023 to 2024, we analyze the establishment of four medicinal plantbeds in Caititu Land as component of the Takatxi Nhipukutximyna project [“Planting Trees for our Traditional Food”], planned and executed by APITC. The plantbeds acted as an inquiry space for WMPC to reclaim their relationship with plants and indigenous knowledge in a post-colonial context. We suggest that, despite differences in human, plant, and spiritual domains, working through them can foster alliances that enhance individual and communal health (Fig. 1).

2. Recovering the Caititu Indigenous Land with Medicinal Plants

4The Caititu Indigenous Land became the first demarcated indigenous land in the Purus Region in 1991. The peri-urban fringe of Lábrea, the final city linked by Brazil’s Transamazônia Highway (BR-210), is one of its boundaries. Its landscape includes the widespread high grass known locally as furão (imperata brasiliensis), encircled by cattle farms and bearing the scars of the exploitative legacy of the rubber industry. The exploitation extended to the indigenous inhabitants, as Malvarisca (interviewee) explained how they “were very discriminated against”. She recounted that they could not express they were Apurinã in the city, but that today they are “trying to rescue what stayed behind, [...] trying to pull what remains, trying to recover and encourage this”. The Caititu Land served as a refuge for displaced indigenous people, particularly the Apurinã from the Upper and Central Purus region. The proximity to the city, christianization, and debt economy, a process rooted in the rubber economy in the Purus Region as described by Schiel (2004) and Brunoro (2023), compelled the Apurinã to deny their indigeneity and aspects of their knowledge. Consequences of the Rubber Boom, both to the landscape and its inhabitants, characterize this territory as a blasted landscape (Tsing, 2014), sites of multispecies disturbances, though these offer political openings for biocultural hope (Kirksey, Shapiro, Brodine 2014).

5Since 2013, indigenous residents have collaborated with OPAN to reforest the peri-urban landscape of Caititu Land by implementing SAFs through communal labor. This effort integrates reforestation with improved access to local foods, diminishing reliance on industrialized food and combining environmental with human health (Papadopoulos, Puig de la Bellacasa, Tachetti 2023). Although SAFs activities facilitated the resurgence of indigenous plant care sciences and practices, discourses on spiritual practices were influenced by christianization, visible by the increase of churches inside the Caititu Land, and the technical vocabulary employed by non-indigenous actors since the Rubber Boom overshadowed the narration of their indigenous knowledge (Fig. 2). Mostly elders or migrants from the Upper and Central Purus retain elements of such traditional practices, although few speak the Apurinã language and ritual festivities have ceased in Caititu Land. Conversely, in regions such as Tumiã and Kamikuã, where the Apurinã language persists, rituals like kyynyry and kamatxi continue to be practiced, which foregrounds plants and their guardian spirits, respected as relational agents that control and protect their environments (Virtanen and Apurinã 2024). These areas are referenced in the Caititu Land for safeguarding their culture and origins.

6SAFs activities also highlighted the relation between indigenous women and their medicinal plants. These are prepared as teas and baths to treat ailments such as fever, diabetes, and malaria, and can also offer protection against arabani during communal labor and institutional meetings with non-indigenous partners. Plants such as rue embody “mysteries” related to their role in communal life, highlighting a continuous albeit fragmented circulation of indigenous knowledge and practices frequently overlooked in daily discussions. Medicinal plants, historically associated with the domestic realm, acquired public prominence through APITC’s projects. At the 2024 SAFs meeting in Caititu Land, women contended that medicinal plantbeds were essential to SAFs and illustrated the interdependence between food and medicine. Likewise, APITC’s project became a sociopolitical arena for indigenous women to advocate for gender equity. The WCMP’s first statement letter clarifies this:

Medicinal plants are grown in agroforestry gardens around our homes, and we use them to care for the family and cure various illnesses. […] Our group rescues and values ​​the knowledge of indigenous medicine through women, establishes and maintains new gardens, ensures abundance in the home and enjoys nature’s richness. We bring women together in meetings to talk, exchange knowledge and support each other. [...] Although many SAF meetings are led by men, we work in partnership and want our ideas for improving SAF to be heard. Often, we do not speak out much for fear that our ideas will not be accepted, but we have received support from the leaders (Lábrea, 03/12/2024).

7APITC has facilitated agro-reforestation and communication among indigenous participants since 2016. In 2022, they obtained funding from the Brazilian Fund for Biodiversity (FunBio) for the extensive project Takatxi Nhipukutximyna, which involved constructing medicinal plantbeds in four villages and emphasized the alliance between indigenous women and medicinal plants. This effort reflects APITC’s aim to reclaim indigenous ways of living amidst urbanization and economic dependency.

8Structural power disparities, including ethnicity, gender and socioeconomical repercussions of coloniality, emerge through the intersectional struggles (Akotirene 2019) in the articulation of indigenous women. In the Caititu Land, medicinal plants become intertwined with women’s efforts to counter colonial structures:

We have this project and we intend to reclaim Apurinã culture. Medicinal plants, handcrafts – there are many who don’t speak our language anymore, I am one of them. But we are finding ways to bring this back, because we are trying to recover. And this starts with medicinal plants and handcrafts, to restore the culture of indigenous peoples. (Malvarisca, interview; Lábrea, 10/07/2024).

9SAFs and medicinal plants are interdependent, akin to the relationships between food and medicine. The knowledge exchange among peers, women and men, elders and youth, fosters collaboration, their mutual care improving the reclaiming of indigenous ways of living.

3. Multimodal Ethnography and Narrative Approach

10This research applied a combined methodology based on multimodal ethnography and a narrative approach to establish a collaborative inquiry space and investigate the dynamic interactions between humans and plants. Multimodal ethnography integrates forms for data collection, processing, and dissemination through multimedia tools in a reflexive manner (Westemoreland 2022). Our methods included participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and visual documentation. Photographs also served as ethnobotanical instruments (Thomas, Vandebroek, Van Damme 2007), and enhance avenues for engaging with plants in more-than-human connections.

11The narrative approach focused on life stories of indigenous women and their connections to medicinal plants. Narratives, according to Gubrium and Holstein (2009), are socially embedded ways of transmitting knowledge entangled with the narrator’s biography and experience. The narratives of the movement’s leaders, Babosa, Hortelãzinha, Malvarisca, Sara-Tudo and Ora-Pro-Nobis, guide our discussion. Daly and Shepard (2024), referencing Viveiros de Castro’s (1998) notion of “cosmological deixis”, emphasize that language functions as a window into ontological grammar. Despite the predominance of Portuguese in Caititu Land, our methodological approach facilitated engaging with a “cosmological narrative”, rooted in their endeavor to reclaim indigenous ways of living in post-colonial worlds.

  • 5 The WhatsApp group was an initiative of the WMPC to facilitate their mobilizations and share medici (...)

12From 2023 and 2024, we engaged in activities with APITC, the WMPC and OPAN, co-organizing the inaugural Indigenous Women Assembly for Medicinal Plants in the Caititu Land and facilitating the establishment of four medicinal plantbeds. Membership in the women’s WhatsApp group enabled ongoing discussions and updates on plant care among the indigenous women and the researchers5. Our commitment to produce with the indigenous women a medicinal plant booklet allowed us to identify together 51 medicinal plants, including 14 fruit-bearing trees in the plantbeds, and at least eight distinct processing techniques: teas, syrups, inhalations, decoctions, ointments, bandages, plant juice and smudging. This paper was presented to and reviewed with indigenous women and their spouses in the Caititu Land. This ensured transparency and enriched our research, both ethically and epistemologically. Aside from rue, we omit details of plant uses to safeguard indigenous environmental knowledge (Fig. 3).

4. Gender and Plants in Amazonia

13In indigenous Amazonian context, relationships are constituted in the body, its fabrication considered essential for personhood formation (Seeger, da Matta, Viveiros de Castro 1979; Santos-Granero 2012). Through composite and accumulative processes, gendered relationships are foregrounded and considered generative through complementarity, mutual obligations, and interdependencies, linked to the management of bodily substances such as menstrual blood (Conklin, Morgan 1996; Conklin 2001; Belaunde 2008). Within political movements, indigenous women’s struggles have focused, beyond territorial issues, on gender equity and health access (Matos 2012; Dutra, Mayorga 2019; Silva 2021). The restricted notion of the domestic realm associated with women’s subjugation raised critiques (Maizza 2019), as their politics of care towards plants should be understood as cosmopolitical relationalities that connect vitalities among different beings (Maizza, Cabral de Oliveira 2022).

14Plants have received special attention in anthropological research, not being viewed as symbolic, passive or material resources, rather recognized as active, agentive and worldmaking entities (Lewis-Jones 2016; Elton 2021). Drawing on multispecies ethnography (Tsing 2015) and philosophical reflections on plant intelligence (Marder 2013), scholars have emphasized plant’s agency and animacy (Virtanen, Whitaker, Peemot 2024), the specificity of their temporalities (Rival 2004; Maizza, Cabral de Oliveira 2022) and their active capacity in improving human-plant health (Elton 2021). Regarded as beings with interiorities, plants in Amazonia have intentional relationships with humans despite their inherent bodily asymmetries (Descola 2013; Viveiros de Castro 1998). Maizza’s (2020) description that plants see themselves as thinking and seeing as people do, exemplifies what Daly and Shepard (2024) termed ‘plant animism’. For the authors, the intersection of biological and spiritual life engages with and reimagines the environment by foregrounding a variety of subjectivities. Here, ‘spirits’ tend to be corporified in heterotopic ways, closer to aliens than immaterial beings (Aparicio 2015).

15Plant kinship is made possible through nurturing bonds, as when indigenous women care for their cultivated plants (Maizza, Cabral de Oliveira 2022; see also Shiratori 2019; Maizza 2020; Shiratori, Cangussu, Furquim 2021). But, as Grotti (2021) demonstrates, nurture’s aspect of care is interrelated with one of dependency, not necessarily leading to familiarization or kinship. In Amazonia, ownership can foreground the nurtured relationality with-in objects and/or people, though differently from Western concepts of private property (Brightman, Fausto, Grotti 2016), as when a group’s chief embodies the plurality of different singularities (Costa 2017). Ownership – or mastery – despite originally stemming from human-animal relationality (see Fausto, 2008), is becoming an important conceptual tool to analyze human-plant relationships in Amazonia. Cassava Mother is an intersubjective being grounded on the alignment of capacities, affects and perspectives between womanhood and cassava (Mentore 2012) and a manifestation of vitality that animates shamanic multiverses (Daly 2021).

16For the Arawak-speaking indigenous Apurinã, master-spirits share a humanity akin to people, and contribute to health by offering resources, protection and knowledge in return for respect and restrain from excessive extraction (Virtanen, Gil 2020). The “Chief-of-Peccary” allows the provision of terrestrial animals (Virtanen 2017), whereas the kinhary awīte, the moriche palm chief-spirit, is the most esteemed guest during the kyynyry and kamatxi ritual festivities. The Apurinã consult and negotiate with them for resource usage and healing, as these spirit beings protect and control environments and their inhabitants, disrespect resulting in illnesses. Analougly as Apurinã (human) chiefs, they are frequently seen as possessing superior guardians, tuky (Virtanen, Apurinã 2024).

17We now examine indigenous women’s narratives and their reclaiming of relationality with more-than-human beings amidst the recovering of their landscape in order to highlight the potential of feminist and indigenous perspectives on human-plant interactions (Maizza, Cabral de Oliveira 2022) to help formulate a novel relational conceptualization of health (Elton, 2021).

5.Caring for Seedlings

18At the first Indigenous Women Assembly for Medicinal Plants (2023), the women emphasized shared parental responsibilities in caring for both children and plant seedlings, urging men to be more involved in family and community health. Men like Cupuaçu, an elder Apurinã, noted how SAFs provide food and medicine, and highlighted ecological benefits of these practices, ensuring that men can help caring for trees with medicinal properties. Bamboo, a young father, argued that cultivating medicinal plants was consistent with their obligations and role in co-parenting and promoting communal health. Ora-Pro-Nobis, embodying her role of leadership, summarized the women’s perspective:

If the plants are sick, you must take care of them, just as we already do with SAFs. It’s every day, like with our children. You can’t wait for other people to do it for you, each one has to take care (zelar) of the plants to make them grow, be open to help each other, including those who don’t receive a plantbed now (Ora-Pro-Nobis, public speech, Novo Paraíso village, 08/06/2023).

  • 6 Although vingar literally means 'avenge/revenge' in Portuguese, in the Catitu land it indicates the (...)

19The establishment of plantbeds exemplified women’s and men’s collaborative effort. One woman was assigned as the seedling’s primary caregiver, while her husband shared the responsibility, contributing to the infrastructure and gathering compost. Prior to soil preparation after constructing Copaiba village’s plantbed, Ora-Pro-Nobis assembled all participants - men, women, children, and seedlings. She juxtaposed the medicinal plantbeds’ activity with the collaborative labor in human communities, stressing how plants congregate in a plantbed similarly to how people form a group. Their union and labor nurtured both plants and humans, safeguarding their members and enabling plants to vingar6 as a response. She concluded:

Even if I am not there in person in all activities, my spirit will be together with you, through the plants and through the women’s union. The more we join and unite ourselves, the stronger we get. But if we try to work alone, we can’t accomplish it properly. [...] I call it [plantbeds] “ours” even if it is not in my village, because each one of these plants has a part of me, of my hands’ touch (Ora-Pro-Nobis, public speech, Copaíba village, 09/07/2023).

20The soil was prepared using a blend of several composts and foliage. After opening a hole, SAF’s leaves quilted the “seedling’s bed” (cama das mudas), mixing a layer of dry cassava peels, burned açaí seeds, soil of creeks’ bottom, forest compost (paú), ashes and manure from chicken and cattle. A final layer composed of burned açaí seeds was applied to conserve moisture and support the plants, irrigated until saturated. To manage different layers of soil provides the seedlings with a welcoming environment rich in a diversity of nutrients, akin to how children require a nurturing environment, i.e. cleaning and cooking to enhance their growth - a comparison often heard from the women (Fig. 4).

21The medicinal plantbeds can be considered as a locus for consubstantiality among women, men and plants, based on the manual preparation of the soil together and on how Ora-Pro-Nobis stresses that each plant has a part of her, since her touch and spirit accompanies the participants. This demonstrates a vital connection among these beings, in addition to the recurrent equivalence between child and plant care. This framework would suggest forms of human-plant kinship. But when the women were directly asked about forming kinship relations with plants in the Caititu Land, there was no affirmative response. One spouse vaguely responded that possibly shamans might have done that formerly, resonating with Shiratori (2019) and Maizza’s (2020) case for the neighboring Jamamadi and Jarawara, respectively. In fact, a respected elderly Apurinã woman asserted that “plant-kinship” might be the “science” of neighbouring indigenous people, but that the Apurinã’s science contends everything in the world to possess an owner, and that these “owners-of-nature” now exist under all-mighty god. The case of rue illustrates aspects of this framework.

5.1 Some of rue’s mysteries

22Rue is an intriguing plant with a rich historical usage dating back to ancient Greece (Pollio et al. 2008) and, since its arrival with Portuguese colonizers, it spread throughout Brazil, as in Afro-Brazilian medicinal practices (Manzali de Sá, Elisabetsky 2012). Renowned for its versatility, each way it is used yields diverse effects. Indigenous scientist Hernandez (2022) described invasive species as displaced relatives with distinct historical scars and unique reasons to flourish in new environments. Deeply integrated into the Caititu Land’s medicinal system, rue is not an invasive species, but shares in this territory a history of displacement with humans. Commonly used for medicinal purposes, its leaf’s juice is mixed with that of cumaruzinho for external massages and ease joint pain. Steaming its leaves in boiling water produces a fragrant vapor, which is inhaled beneath a blanket to relieve sinusitis. An infusion of rue, consumed bi-daily for three days, is effective against “women’s pain” (dor-de-mulher), dysmenorrhea. These practices show its healing potential in individualized human bodies.

23Rue’s presence in a garden, plantbed, or home protects its plant companions, human caregivers, and the environment. As an amulet, rue branches are worn behind the ear to guard against mau-olhado, which can perpetuate forms of envy and lead to arabani. In situations requiring discretion as crowded gatherings, branches are concealed to prevent the perception of distrust toward others, often tucked inside clothing like a bra. Some elders advise keeping one rue hidden from other’s view to safeguard the household. According to the women, envy is often “thrown” through sight, and an inadvertent gaze, even of admiration, can trigger mau-olhado and lead to unintended harm – as the perishing of the plantbed (for eyesight as a vehicle of illnesses, see Shiratori 2019). Rue counters this risk at the cost of its own vitality. It can also function as an inverted amulet, in which gendered knowledge is significant: by placing a branch of rue on the sole of a woman’s foot prevents her women-pain from being “transmitted” to nearby women, confining menstrual discomfort in individual bodies instead of its spread in the community. While Ora-Pro-Nobis watered her medicinal plants, admiring the beauty and fragrance of her rue when caressing its leaves, she shared that it is a delicate protection plant that can perish easily without proper care. After expending its vitality to shield its caregiver and the environment, the plant may start appearing “sad” and “tired”. Sara-Tudo elucidated that rue should not see any menstruating women as it perceives menstrual blood as an illness that causes it to wither, and Babosa added that its female caretakers are an exception to this rule (Fig. 5).

24A strong-willed plant with many mysteries, rue doesn’t allow itself to be taken care of easily. Together with plants that share a protective capacity, such as pinhão-roxo (genus Jatropha) and mucuracaá (genus Petiveria), they are considered chief-plants of the plantbed. For instance, transplanting requires communicating with both the plant and its owner-of-nature, as recounted by Sara-Tudo, to persuade rue’s spirit to accompany the human caretaker and flourish in its new environment. After asking for this permission, rue’s branch may be cut. However, its cutting must be stolen without their human caretaker’s awareness rather than gifted or exchanged. Indigenous women in Caititu Land stated that this enhances rue’s protective potency, increases the chances that its spirit will be allowed to accompany its new human caretaker and that its owner-of-nature will overlook and protect its new environment. This “theft” often prompted laughter during meetings, as everyone understood they were basically stealing from each other within their territory. At one meeting, a husband humorously announced his intention to steal his wife’s rue branch without her acknowledgment to ensure its efficacy.

25A few spouses mobilized the case of the mãe-da-seringueira (rubber-tree-mother) to explain the relation between medicinal plantbeds and owners-of-nature. The mãe-da-seringueira resides in the largest rubber tree in the middle of a rubber road, caring and protecting the beings living in her surroundings. To ensure latex, the road’s rubber tree must be treated with care by avoiding excessive tapping and minimizing its injury – a sign of respecting the mãe-da-seringueira. Similarly, rue and its protective capacity involve social dynamics and human-plant well-being that transcend individual health. But, while permission must be sought from owners-of-nature for its transplanting, it must be stolen from humans, linking the human and spiritual realm. If rue accepts its new human caretaker, it reciprocates human care and proves its role as a plant-chief by exchanging its own vitality to protect its “web of sociality” (Aparicio 2015).

5.2 Vital connections with-in plantbeds

26Six months after the conclusion of the medicinal plantbeds project, one of the indigenous women fell ill. She used to be one of the most active indigenous women in the WhatsApp group, and we stopped receiving her cheerful voice and the images of her “happy and colorful” plants. Soon after, her medicinal plants began to perish. Her care routine was interrupted, which included visiting and talking to her plants, sharing their beauty with our online group through photos and audios. Concerned for that woman’s health, the WMPC proposed to gather seedlings and to revitalize her plantbed by nurturing surviving plants and the newly gifted ones. We followed this situation via the WhatsApp group and contemplated what WMPC’s gesture suggested: that caring for the plants influenced the human caretaker’s health, implying an interconnection between their vitalities. In addition to cultivating medicinal plants, could the restoration of the plantbed contribute to revitalizing the health of its human-owner?

27Upon presenting this hypothesis to the indigenous women, some of them elucidated that, in the caretaker’s absence, the latter should entrust the plants’ nurturing responsibility to someone else. An elderly woman shared that if the plants accept this new caretaker and the owners-of-nature acknowledge her dedication, the plants would vingar. This parallels the practice of entrusting a child’s care to a trustworthy person, who must also gain the child’s acceptance. Additionally, many women and their husbands noted the affectionate bond formed between human caretakers and plants. In the caretaker's absence, the plants can feel saudade, a profound feeling of longing. In those instances, the owners-of-nature may intervene in favour of the caretaker’s recovery to restore her to her role of supporting the plant realm.

28Malvarisca stated that upon her return after hiatus, her first action is conversing with her plants to ensure they can see and hear her. Otherwise, the plants may be overwhelmed by saudade and die. Her current approach to mitigate such “plant’s longing” involves engaging her husband in the daily care of the plantbed; the closer he is physically to it, the better the plants will get acquainted with him as he learns how they appreciate to be taken care of. In her absence, like situations of illness, her husband becomes attuned to her medicinal plants and takes part of their daily care. The owners-of-nature, then, might acknowledge their co-nurturing effort to intervene in her recovery and bring her closer to the plantbed again. However, certain medicinal plants may signal a potential death. Hortelãzinha and her spouse explained that the vitality of the capim-cidreira (genus Cymbopogon) is intrinsically linked to the caretaker’s health. When it suddenly starts to perish, it is imperative to cut it and get rid of its remains, otherwise the plant’s spirit may “kidnap” (see also Maizza 2019: 8) the human caretaker. Owners-of-nature, too, can inflict harm on humans through vengeance. The women articulated that, in the preparation of medicinal remedies, it is imperative to ask for the owners-of-nature’s permission to harvest leaves or branches, and their intention must be clear to guarantee the plant’s potency. Failure to do so may offend them, resulting in vengeful acts against humans, including the infliction of sicknesses, as part of its protecting function. In this regard, we concur with indigenous scholar Hernandez (2022: 47) who asserts that “nature protects us as long as we protect nature”.

6. Conclusions

We must make our dreams come true, prove our value by building these plantbeds, and show that we also have knowledge – not only the institutions. [...] Because it is us, who live in the forest, who know our reality and know how to heal ourselves and save lives with these plants. It is because of my medicinal plant knowledge that my family remains alive (Ora-Pro-Nobis, public speech, Copaíba village, 09/07/2023).

29Ora-Pro-Nobis’ quote is a direct critique to contemporary health institutions that, although sometimes coined as “Indigenous Health” (Saúde Indígena), reproduce westernized practices of health treatments grounded on allopathic remedies. She indirectly recalls the time in which she used to live in the Marenê, Paterenê and Sapatini, tributaries from the Purus River, when she only relied on medicinal plants and forest knowledge to heal her family. This is part of the “Apurinã science” related to the “forest reality” that heals and saves lives. As demonstrated, despite colonial influences of debt logic, christianization and urbanization, the medicinal plantbeds allow forest-related indigenous knowledge to co-exist with urbanity and its impacts - even if owners-of-nature exist today under all-mighty god. Thus, a health perspective grounded on a relational approach towards plants persists in the Caititu Land, resisted colonial time and is reclaimed by the WCMP and their politics of care.

30Relational health is how Elton (2021) defined health processes arising from interconnected and interdependent relationships, based on her research in food-gardens, wherein plants are actors in healing and socioecological restoration. The case of medicinal plantbeds in the Caititu Land adds notions of gender equity and of indigenous human-plant relationalities of ownership along that of kinship to this framework. Regarding gender relationships, women working together with their husbands appears to enhance the generative potency of care. Malvarisca notes that working with her husband completes each other’s knowledge, as one might know what the other does not, including their gendered knowledge. To form a collective of indigenous women displays an intersectional struggle to occupy places of decision-making and let their ideas be heard instead of fearing for them, as stated in their public letter. During a narrative interview, Malvarisca emphasized that «receiving support from our husband is the best thing there is», concluding that «what is important is that our work is equal, men and women together».

31In our research we highlight the establishment of medicinal plantbeds in the Caititu Land and how daily care practices are shared among women, plants and the ‘spiritual’ realm. The degree of how colonialism has impacted, in the case of the Caititu Land, gendered inequalities and the controversies between plant kinship and plant ownership, is similar to how Shiratori, Cangussu and Furquim (2021) have described the “plant controversies” regarding plant management and cultivation, and the differences on mobility between the indigenous Jamamadi and their ‘nomadic’ neighbors Hi-Merimã. It is evident, in the Caititu Land, that caring for medicinal plantbeds exceeds the acquisition of biochemical components. Instead, medicinal plantbeds materialize the indigenous women’s resilience as a site of intersectional struggles, for reclaiming indigenous knowledge and reparative work. Wright (2022) suggests that epistemic violence of colonialism attacks coevolutionary futures by unraveling multispecies webs of “ethical time” carefully and historically woven among more-than-human beings. The Caititu Land’ case resonates with her proposal: that regenerative, resurgence and recuperative work are what will resist such forms of colonialism, today and for the future (Fig. 6).

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Allegato

Fig. 1. The Women’s Medicinal Plants Collective in Caititu Land (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2023)

Fig. 2. Caititu Land in the Purus Region (Image by Gustavo F. V. Silveira, retrieved from: https://raizesdopurus.com.br/​povos-e-territorios/​, last accessed 29/05/2025)

Fig. 3. The Caititu Land’s First Assembly for Medicinal Plants led by the WMPC in 2023 (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2023)

Fig. 4. Caring for children and seedlings in the medicinal plantbed (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2024)

Fig. 5. Rue, an aromatic plant with long ramified leaves and small yellow flowers (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2024)

Fig. 6. Celebrating the conclusion of a medicinal plantbed (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2023)

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Note

1 We thank WMPC in the Caititu Land and the spouses, who authorized this research and shared with us their narratives, practices, and affection to medicinal plants. Their names were pseudonymized. We also thank APITC and OPAN for their trust, and the editor of this special issue, the two anonymous reviewers, and Gabriel Roman for their insightful comments – their advices has been very useful. This research has been funded by the Belgian FRS-FNRS doctoral FRESH scholarship and, in Brazil, is linked to a research project on political trajectories of women, supported by FAPEMIG APQ 03122-18 and CNPq (productivity grant).

2 The WMPC is composed of 16 women who are part of the SAFs Collective: one Jarawara, one Paumari, one Sateré-Maué, and thirteen Apurinã women, the latter leading the WMPC and participating in our research.

3 ‘Owner-of-nature’ is a specific term that appeared in our fieldwork, along with ‘chief-spirit.’ Debating the use of this term (particularly, the concept of ‘owning’) in this setting is beyond this paper’s scope, but we encourage further research to elucidate its contingency in the Caititu Land’s context of christianization and urbanization.

4 The neighboring indigenous Paumari designate their shaman as arabani (see Bonilla 2005). In the Caititu Land, the Apurinã appropriated this word to describe shamanic powers, which can stem from envy and manifest as illnesses that biomedicine can’t heal.

5 The WhatsApp group was an initiative of the WMPC to facilitate their mobilizations and share medicinal knowledge.

6 Although vingar literally means 'avenge/revenge' in Portuguese, in the Catitu land it indicates the plants' capacity to grow.

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Indice delle illustrazioni

Legenda Fig. 1. The Women’s Medicinal Plants Collective in Caititu Land (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2023)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aam/docannexe/image/10487/img-1.png
File image/png, 1,1M
Legenda Fig. 2. Caititu Land in the Purus Region (Image by Gustavo F. V. Silveira, retrieved from: https://raizesdopurus.com.br/​povos-e-territorios/​, last accessed 29/05/2025)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aam/docannexe/image/10487/img-2.png
File image/png, 266k
Legenda Fig. 3. The Caititu Land’s First Assembly for Medicinal Plants led by the WMPC in 2023 (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2023)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aam/docannexe/image/10487/img-3.png
File image/png, 1,0M
Legenda Fig. 4. Caring for children and seedlings in the medicinal plantbed (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2024)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aam/docannexe/image/10487/img-4.png
File image/png, 1,1M
Legenda Fig. 5. Rue, an aromatic plant with long ramified leaves and small yellow flowers (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2024)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aam/docannexe/image/10487/img-5.png
File image/png, 778k
Legenda Fig. 6. Celebrating the conclusion of a medicinal plantbed (Photo: Markus S. Enk, 2023)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aam/docannexe/image/10487/img-6.png
File image/png, 1,3M
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Notizia bibliografica digitale

Markus S. Enk e Luciana Kind, «Indigenous Women’s Politics of Care: Human and medicinal plants vital connections in the Caititu Land, Brazilian Amazon»Archivio antropologico mediterraneo [Online], Anno XXVIII, n. 27 (1) | 2025, online dal 20 juin 2025, consultato il 19 juillet 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/aam/10487; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/145ow

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Autori

Markus S. Enk

Université Libre de Bruxelles - markus.enk@ulb.be

Luciana Kind

Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais - lukind@gmail.com

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