Health policies and indigenous peoples: experiences in managing the covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Since the 2000s, anthropological research has accumulated important perspectives on the universe of indigenous health policies proposed by the Brazilian State, in particular the reorganization of indigenous health services through special indigenous health districts (DSEI). Such research systematically addressed health policy production towards indigenous peoples with questions focused on the possibilities and limits of the proposed differentiated care model, as well as forms of social participation. Our objective in this article is to analyze some strategies of action and resistance through an articulated analysis of two ethnographic fields: (1) the 2023 annual assembly of the Xukuru people of Ororubá (RN), which brought to the center of the debate an assessment of the subsystem and the actions carried out by them before and during the pandemic, (2) the coping plans and epidemiological bulletins released by the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (SESAI) during the 2020-2022 period. The pandemic was a period in which indigenous peoples spoke out in defense of the subsystem. Thus, we try to describe how the pandemic scenario highlighted aspects of forms of indigenous mobilization that deserve space for reflection by revealing connections between therapeutic itineraries and political itineraries.