Healing practices of the Potiguara People: knowledge and science through the power of plants
Potiguara People, healing, science, body; soul.
I present the healing practices to the body and soul, developed by the Potiguara of Paraíba, a people/ethnic group to which I belong as an indigenous person. These traditions are inherent to a people who fought courageously without departing from their traditional territories. As an indigenous people with a significant history in the conquest of Paraíba, our community deserves recognition as a protagonist on the national context, bridging scientific knowledge with traditional understandings of how to heal our people, but also healing non-indigenous individuals who seek our people for specific purposes. Our ethnicity possesses medicine, wisdom, philosophy, and other forms of knowledge that can engage in dialogue with the sciences, and this document aims to facilitate such dialogues. The cultural practices experienced by the Potiguara must be examined through scientific anthropological point of view since they are part of the daily life of the indigenous villages and exhibit rigorous evidence to treat illnesses that are not diagnosed by medical practitioners, since healing comes from indigenous sciences that are integral to our history.