THE PRAYER, THE HERBAL BATH – QUILOMBOLA AND INDIGENOUS TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE FOR PSYCHIC HEALTH: PRAYERS, HERBS, BLESSINGS, AND COMMUNITY HEALING PRACTICES IN THE FACE OF RACISM, DISPLACEMENT, AND STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE

Abstract

In contexts marked by structural racism, territorial expropriation, forced displacement, and multiple forms of historical violence, quilombola and Indigenous populations have persistently mobilized traditional knowledge as strategies of care, resistance, and preservation of life. Practices such as prayers, herbal baths, blessings, and community healing rituals constitute not only therapeutic resources but also expressions of a distinct cosmology, in which psychic health, body, territory, ancestry, and collectivity are articulated in an inseparable manner. In this sense, the article is grounded in the recognition that such practices challenge hegemonic and individualizing biomedical conceptions of mental health, affirming modes of care rooted in collective memory, community belonging, and ancestral spirituality. The object of this article is the analysis of quilombola and Indigenous traditional knowledge related to community healing practices – such as prayers, the use of medicinal herbs, blessings, and collective rituals – as dispositifs of psychic health care and of confrontation with the effects of racism, territorial uprooting, and structural violence. By engaging with critical perspectives from collective health, anthropology, decolonial studies, and traditional knowledge systems, the text seeks to understand these practices as social technologies of care, capable of producing meaning, symbolic protection, subjective strengthening, and the recomposition of community bonds. The guiding research question is: to what extent do quilombola and Indigenous traditional knowledges, expressed through community healing practices, contribute to the promotion of psychic health and to collective resistance in the face of structural violence imposed by racism and coloniality? Theoretically, the study draws on the works of Arthur Kleinman (1995; 2020), Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1993), Paul Farmer (1998; 2003), Cecil Helman (1984), Franco Basaglia (1968; 2005), Achille Mbembe (2017; 2018; 2021), Frantz Fanon (1980; 2008; 2022), Lélia Gonzalez (2017; 2018; 2020; 2022), Kabengele Munanga (2005; 2015; 2019), Clóvis Moura (1988; 1994; 2020), Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga (1990; 2022), Viveiros de Castro (1992; 2007; 2009; 2014), Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert (2013; 2019), Ailton Krenak (2019; 2020), Daniel Munduruku (2005; 2013), Juana Elbein dos Santos (1986), Vicente Parizi (2020), Hertz Wendel de Camargo (2019), Gustavo Wada Ferreira (2022), among others. The research adopts a qualitative approach (Minayo, 2007), with a descriptive and bibliographic design (Gil, 2008), and a comprehensive analytical perspective (Weber, 1949). The findings indicate that prayers, herbal baths, blessings, and community rituals operate as collective dispositifs of psychic health care among quilombola and Indigenous populations, articulating body, spirituality, territory, and ancestry. These practices contribute to the reduction of psychic suffering associated with structural racism, displacement, and historical violence, while simultaneously strengthening community bonds and collective identities. Their character as forms of epistemological resistance to individualizing biomedical hegemony is also evidenced. Recognizing these knowledges broadens the understanding of health care and points toward more plural and antiracist models.