"A mãe do corpo e os cuidados na menstruação": mulheres Potiguara da Paraíba e as práticas da saúde indígena

Abstract

This research report accompanies the film "A mãe do corpo e os cuidados na menstruação" ("The Body's Mother and Menstrual Care"), produced as a Final Project for the Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology with a Visual specialization at the Federal University of Paraíba. The work analyzes menstrual health care practices among Potiguara indigenous women from the northern coast of Paraíba, through an intergenerational perspective, examining how these women navigate their menstrual cycles between ancestral knowledge and biomedical knowledge. The central problem guiding the research is the tension between the Potiguara conception of menstruation as health — expressed in the native notion of "mãe do corpo" (body's mother) — and the progressive silencing of these practices through territorial and cultural colonization. The methodology is grounded in Tuxá's (2023) concept of positionality, situating the researcher as a Potiguara woman investigating her own people; semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and ethnographic audiovisual production were carried out as instruments of knowledge and communication (Barbosa; Cunha, 2006). The theoretical framework draws on Raffestin's (1993) notion of territoriality, Peirano's (2001) concept of ritual, Federici's (2017) critique of the expropriation of feminine knowledge, and Bispo's (2023) counter-colonial perspective. The film is an outcome of the research and highlights the resilience of knowledge surrounding the "mãe do corpo" insofar as territorial and community conditions allow for its transmission as a political act of reconnection with ancestral care practices.