Indigenous People In South America

Do you remember what happened to indigenous people when Europeans arrived in South America in the XIV century with the desire to explore this land? They spoil the indigenous population not only with slave work and forest exploration, but spreading infections diseases among these people who had never contacted many kinds of pathogens. Hill and Hurtado (1996) has found that “first face-to-face contacts result in the death of between one third and half of the native population within the first five years of contact (as cited in Hurtado and colleges, 2001, p. 427) as also Hurtado, Labourne, James Hill, Chemanand and Baca (2005) support that the current population of Southern Kayapo is 1% of the original amount of people. Infections diseases cause …show more content…
However, young indigenous have already raised in an altered environment and could not know how explain the relationship between Chaga 's disease and environment spoil. Concerns about ethnic issues must be conscientiously adopted, in the aim to not harm people, neither offer insecurity about their culture. Analyze the context and possible ways to help indigenous people is not an easier task, because it surrounds their tradition and beliefs. As Foster and Anderson (as cited in Gezon & Kottak, 2014, p. 251) explained, there are different theories about the causes of diseases: some indigenous tribes might belief in personalistic disease theory, that associate illness to ancestral spirits, ghosts, warlocks, while western medicine acclaim to naturalistic disease theory, attributing diseases causes to identifiable organisms, external factors, or body …show more content…
As a result, disharmony can arise from disagreement with some rules, creed and knowledges. According to Hurtado et al. (2005) “even programs extended into indigenous areas may fail because racist attitudes among health providers greatly limit access to services and because the programs are designated with the incorrect assumption that human groups are culturally and biologically homogeneous” (p. 642). Surely, professionals could study and understand community culture before going in the villages and instruct people about health caretaking. I summary, a medical ethnographic study require abilities to observe, participate, talk with people and getting as much as possible information to understand not only how people get diseases, but how they usually explain it causes, the linkage between changes experienced across the time and spread of disease, as the insertion of illness sights in culture, that differ from the view of western medicine (as well awareness about this issue in health