Woyie t’ woyie: Recovering knowledge, wisdom, and practices of the Wichí people for an intercultural epistemic transformation of health systems

Abstract

This paper starts from a fact of the Argentine reality: the public policies on health carried out by the national State since its conformation, ignore and make invisible the epistemes and the horizons of the meaning of those native peoples who preceded it. Therefore, it is urgent to think of possible ways of construction between the State and the indigenous people that lead to intercultural health systems. In order to concretely show this fact of reality that we postulate, the paper deals with the State-indigenous people’s health problem in a particular area of the province of Salta, inhabited by Wichí communities. There, a program was implemented in the territory that addressed primary health issues, but this program quickly lost state support. Based on the analysis of this experience, focused mainly on children and mothers, this paper presents some results and conclusions: high infant mortality due to malnutrition; absence of primary health care in the territory; lack of knowledge and deep disinterest of the government to recover the epistemes of these communities and develop an intercultural health system and, even more serious, the Wichí communities are victims of extreme poverty due to actions and omissions of a State that historically ignores and underestimates them.