Dealing Healings:a study of relations between non-indigenous health professionals and indigenous mobilized for the Xingu Project

Abstract

Relations between Indians and non-Indians are a frequent theme in anthropological studies carried out in Brazil, where seeks to, in general, an understanding of the meanings produced by this type of contact. In the specific case of biomedical shares in indigenous areas, theme of this research must be taken into mind that these actions take place alongside to the traditional medicines of these people, and both biomedicine and indigenous medicine, are autonomous systems of healing. This means to say that are involved not only different conceptions of health and disease, but the factors and actors involved too, which generates, despite some complementary, some misunderstandings on both sides of the relationship. Building on these findings, I will deal with a specific case of "intermedicaly", one performed by the Xingu Project on the Indigenous Park of the Xingu (PIX), a project organized by the Paulista School of Medicine since 1965, in which biomedical and health care professionals non-Indians entering in direct contact with indigenous populations.So in this project, the central focus of observation is considered the situations of indigenous disease that motivate the intervention of Xingu Project professionals. These tend to mobilize incisive action and are, on the one hand, preventive, and secondly, involve situations understood (by biomedical) of life or death. It seems that these cases authorize greater biomedical intervention as being "white disease," a term with different meanings for both involved. The objective here is to understand what distinguishes them from other situations "pathological" seen as unrelated to white, and to focus on negotiations and motivations that "white disease" raise.