The article explores the emergence of traditional indigenous medicine as an object of discourse within the field of public policy and indigenous health. There are a gamut of meanings that inform the notion of traditional indigenous medicine in this field and they are steadily being revised and/or created in concrete dialogical situations, which endows them with an emergent nature. If official discourses use the power of naming to conceptualize traditional medicine, indigenous discourse designates knowledge and practices of self-attention rooted in specific local contexts. Public policy is appropriated and indigenized by indigenous peoples, gaining new meanings and influencing the sociocultural re-organization of health care.
public policy; indigenous health; traditional indigenous medicine; midwives, shamans, and indigenous health agents; Upper Juruá