Parteiras indígenas e os objetos do partejar: apropriação, usos, sentidos e significados

Abstract

This thesis is the result of a study that sought to analyze the strategies of the Working with Traditional Midwives Program and its repercussions on a group of Krahô women. Midwife kit delivery is an icon of the program, a presumption that a new practice aligned with hegemonic knowledge will begin there after. Thus, the study sought to analyze how Krahô women view their participation in the program and take ownership of and resignify midwife kit objects in the home birth context. The thesis is structured in four papers, each representing different moments of the study. The first two occurred prior to fieldwork and result from issues raised during the development stage of the midwifery program and throughout the process of approval by ethics committees.The last two stem from fieldwork and were mainly supported by anthropology and the ethnographic method. The procedures for the ethical approval of the study were tortuous and overly bureaucratic. Experience has indicated that ethical or unethical stances can be experienced in the singular and subjective processes, regardless of what may be recorded in forms. Results point to a mismatch between the discourse and the practice of recognizing traditional knowledge and a clear ethnocentric bias of the program when offering tools outside the rationale of women care and assuming an impact on health indicators from the acquisition of hegemonic knowledge. The objects were appropriated and resignified in the daily life of villages, but they failed to find a clear place in the context of home birth. Symbolic violence traits emerged and the categorization of Krahô women as "midwives" brought impacts and losses in the social relationship of some women. We suggest reviving the intercultural realm in the formulation and implementation of public policies directed to this public as a profitable pathway, under penalty of engendering an alienated and alienating cycle, wasting resources and delaying important discussions such as the strengthening of the health care network around indigenous women.