Sacred Medicinal Plants and Impacts on the Traditional Healing System of the Rodelas/BA’s Tuxá Indigenous People

Abstract

The changes in the biological formation of the São Francisco River after the construction of the Itaparica dam directly interfered in the socio-environmental, cultural and religious dynamics of the Tuxá people. This article aims to investigate the interaction of the Rodelas/BA’s Tuxá Indigenous People, with medicinal plants in their healing rituals. For this, qualitative and quantitative techniques were used, such as ethnography, which aims to understand the particularities of the cultural aspects of a specific people. With the help of interviews, workshops and ethnomapping with young people, adults and the elderly. 30 indigenous people were interviewed. In the data analysis, the salience index technique was used, which makes it possible to quantify the cultural relevance and to analyze the different patterns of knowledge about the use of plants. Among the 39 plants mentioned for spiritual cures, caboclo rosemary (Baccharis Sylvestris L.) has a higher frequency of citation. This result suggests that caboclo rosemary has a greater scope in physical and spiritual healing, being the first to be remembered. As for the salience index, both caboclo rosemary and juazeiro (Ziziphus Mart.) Obtained the same value (0.5). Suggesting that the two plants have a greater cultural representativeness of use in relation to the 39 mentioned. The Tuxá indigenous people carry in their experience a great knowledge of their medicinal flora, and from it they take various remedies that they use in different ways to heal both the body and the spirit.