“When Yepamahsã, the Creator God, made the world, he gave each Indigenous people their own ‘blessing’,” says Anacleto Barreto, aged 60, with the ease of someone repeating a lesson learned early in life. “Ours, that of the Tukano people, is called bahsese.”
Editor’s note
This article is part of Dialogue Earth’s Indigenous Voices fellowship. The eight fellows are Indigenous journalists and storytellers from across the Global South. The fellowship aims to foreground not just Indigenous issues, but also the storytelling, reporting and insights of Indigenous journalists themselves.
Bahsese is a complex system of body care for preventing and treating illnesses, using rituals inspired by mythical narratives known as kihti ukuse. Identified as a child by leaders who recognised his calling, Anacleto developed this knowledge, passed down orally through generations, until he became a kumua – a ritual healer.
Anacleto applies this knowledge at the Bahserikowi Indigenous Medicine Centre (BCMI) that he co-founded in 2017. The centre is in Manaus, a fast-growing Brazilian city of over two million people in the heart of the Amazon. The centre has established itself as a leading hub for Indigenous medicine in the city. It attracts interest from researchers, students and non-Indigenous patients alike, who wish to learn about alternative forms of care to conventional western medicine.
Indigenous knowledge revitalised
Anacleto comes from the Uremipira community of Alto Rio Negro, in the north-western state of Amazonas. This region is one of the most biodiverse in Brazil, and is inhabited by peoples such as the Tukano, Desana and Tuyuka. Currently, all Bahserikowi’s kumuas originate from the region, their confluence of diverse knowledge influencing how the practice of bahsese has developed at the centre.
Bahsese regards health, food and the protection of the territory as inseparable. “When we look after the forest, the land and the water, we are safeguarding our quality of life,” explains João Paulo Barreto. He is an Indigenous researcher, also of the Tukano people, and a lecturer in social anthropology at the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM).
The Indigenous doctor and researcher, Israel Fontes Dutra, describes bahsese as a series of rituals for protection, the prevention of ill health, and healing. These extend from the body to crops, food and homes, ensuring a balance between humans, the environment and the spiritual world.
The researcher notes that, between the 17th and 20th centuries, these rituals were classified as “diabolical” by Christian missions. This contributed to the dismantling of cultural and spiritual systems in Alto Rio Negro. Since the 1970s, the researcher adds, there have been revitalisation initiatives, particularly amidst struggles for the demarcation of Indigenous lands.
“We are faced with various models of knowledge. Science is one model, and Indigenous peoples have another,” says João Paulo. “What we need is to learn to engage in dialogue across these differences.”
Promoting Indigenous medicine…
Anacleto recalls how his niece, then aged 20, was bitten by a snake in 2017 in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, which is home to several Alto Rio Negro communities. Taken over 800 km to Manaus for specialist treatment, doctors recommended amputating her leg.
The family asked to combine hospital care with traditional knowledge, but the proposal was refused. Faced with this, Anacleto and other specialists decided to take over the young woman’s treatment using bahsese. Anacleto says she recovered and the amputation was avoided.
Speaking softly, first in Tukano, his mother tongue, and then in Portuguese, Anacleto explains the process. He says everything begins with the “cleansing” of the body – the removal of impurities and imbalances – and only then does the specialist perform the necessary rituals. The treatment, he emphasises, does not focus on the illness. The body as a whole is considered, in relation to the environment and the ways in which it has been treated throughout life.
The specialists do not reject conventional medicine, Anacleto says, but rather work in tandem with it. There are no standardised bahsese protocols: each case is assessed individually, and each part of the body requires specific practices and is attributed particular words, gestures and sequences. “Here on the knee, it’s one process, on the stomach it’s another, on the head it’s another,” he explains.
Anacleto recounts the founding of the Bahserikowi Indigenous Medicine Centre almost as a manifesto: to preserve and value age-old practices, without the oversight of conventional medicine. Today, the centre treats both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, with lower fees for Indigenous people.
…and Indigenous food
Bahsese is also expressed through food at the medical centre, which accommodates the independently operated Biatüwi Indigenous Food House. The space was created by João Paulo and his wife, Clarinda Ramos, who is the head of the kitchen and a member of the Sateré people. Biatüwi has been designed as a way to emphasise food’s part in the healthcare system.
From 11am to 3pm, Wednesday to Saturday, anyone can take a seat and choose from Indigenous dishes such as beiju and chibé (a savoury cake and a thick soup, both made from cassava flour), roasted fish, moqueca (a type of fish stew) and maniwara ants.
But those in charge avoid calling Biatüwi a restaurant. The purpose of the space, they emphasise, goes beyond that. “A restaurant, from our point of view, produces food to satisfy people’s hunger. Not here,” says João Paulo. “We want to satisfy hunger but we also want to satisfy the thirst for knowledge.”
Those who sit down at the table usually hear explanations about the ingredients, the methods of preparation and the care involved. At Bahserikowi, food is a part of the same process of care that takes place in the treatment rooms – a learning experience about the body, the territory and the relationship with the forest, even in an urban context.
For example, before being prepared, the fish and meat undergo a process of cleaning and protection. “This care is not only about hygiene,” says João Paulo. “It is a ritual that prepares the body to receive what comes from the forest without causing illness.”
Indigenous women and care
All the specialists carrying out Bahserikowi’s consultations currently happen to be men. But the knowledge underpinning these practices is also shared and passed on by women, through oral tradition and daily life in the Indigenous territories of the peoples of Alto Rio Negro. “I grew up watching my grandmother, my aunts and my mother providing this care,” says one of Bahserikowi’s managers, Carla Wisu, of the Desana people.
She recalls her grandmother supporting pregnant women and identifying signs of illness even before they physically manifested. But, she says, these roles have historically been rendered invisible: “Women have always been treated as an afterthought.”
For this reason, Wisu advocates turning the medical centre into a place for training and empowering Indigenous female leaders involved in healthcare: “Women have always looked after people’s health. Now they also need to be in decision-making spaces, speaking out, researching and leading.”
Wisu is studying for a master’s degree in social anthropology at the Federal University of Amazonas and researching Indigenous medicine from women’s perspectives. The latter subject has barely been explored by both non-Indigenous researchers and Indigenous men.
“We’re not going to academia to seek validation. It’s to document, engage in dialogue and speak from our own perspective,” says Wisu.
Amidst the challenges of this urban context and the fast pace of city life in Manaus, bahsese continues to be practised and is gaining followers. Ancestral knowledge has not been restricted to its territory of origin, but has found another place in the city to continue existing – as a practice of care, cultural affirmation and Indigenous resistance in the Amazon.
