Women, body-territory and indigenous health in Brazil from a decolonial feminist perspective

Abstract

Health actions for indigenous women require understandings that go beyond the specificities required by the health policy aimed at indigenous peoples, since the category “indigenous women” is doubly the target of discrimination, and there is still a great lack of knowledge about their health needs. And, unlike what could be inferred, certain feminist guidelines such as “the right to one’s own body” do not find echo among indigenous women, since the body is understood beyond the individual experiences. Faced with these questions, this article aims, from the theoretical deepening of decolonial feminism, to understand the main demands of indigenous women, especially those that unite them in their cross-border struggles, despite the multiplicity of indigenous peoples and their specificities. This research was undertaken through bibliographical research, in which the point of view of women, especially indigenous women, was prioritized. As a result, the notion of “body-territory” is taken as the focal point of debates about the indissociation between health and access to land, and they are at the core of the struggle of indigenous women’s movements. In the end, we highlight the project organized by one of these movements, “Reflorestarmentes”, which aims to organize ancestral knowledge and technologies developed and preserved by indigenous women. The project seeks to spread them to the rest of humanity, in order to help all of them to take consciousness and act urgently in favor of the care required by Mother Earth and by the territorial bodies themselves, through self-care.