Estudo etnobotânico na comunidade de Taquara : a luta pelo uso de plantas nativas pelo povo Kaiowá, MS, Brasil

Resumo Ingles

This study took place with indigenous people of Kaiowá ethnicity of the Guarani linguistic trunk from the Tekoha Taquara, in the municipal Juti, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul (MS). This group has been expulsed from their ancestral territory. Wishing to remain on their land, the Kaiowá of Taquara camp on what is today considered the private property of Fazenda Brasília do Sul. Though the declaratory decree that recognizes Taquara as an indigenous territory was released in 2010, its effects have been suspended since its release. The Kaiowá of Taquara are being massacred by the omission of land demarcation. This study will demonstrate that this area is the ancestral land of this people, through the lens of traditional knowledge associated with local flora. To this end, species with medicinal uses were surveyed. The data was collected via guided tours. Two indigenous biologists assisted as interlocutors who facilitated interaction with seven indigenous informants. The information collected includes Guarani name of plants, the formal 7 translation, the popular name in Portuguese, and the related use and parts used of each plant. The Taquara informants revealed 106 medicinal species, of which 90 were identified to the specific level. In terms of number of species, this is the largest list of any known study realized with indigenous communities in the state, and the third largest list for the state of MS. The families with most commonly represented species were Asteraceae (9 species) and Fabaceae (8 species). The related uses were standardized according to the International Classification of Disease (ICD) of the World Health Organization (WHO). The uses of Taquara’s plants reached the largest number of categories, with the genito-urinary system having the most citations. Endangered species were found in Taquara, and information about others that no longer occur in the area was communicated by the informants and tracked in the study. Plants that appear in the cosmology of this indigenous group were cited, revealing ancient knowledge of the vegetation. Data collected was compared with seven ethnobotanical articles registered in MS and with other herbarium data within the state, from which a similarity matrix was generated. Compiling literature and herbarium data produced a list of 628 medicinal plants for the state of MS. Taquara stands out, with 61,1% of the species cited in no other study. Informant Consensus Factor (FIC) was used to compare the homogeneity of the plant uses across the state, treating each article as a citation an informant, which illustrated little consistency of plant uses throughout groups. The present study is the first to report the combination of different species in the treatment of illnesses. The amalgamation of results demonstrates the uniqueness, specificity and antiquity of the plant knowledge of the Kaiowá of Taquara. This suggests that their knowledge is the result of years of co-evolution of the local flora of this territory, indeed affirming Taquara as the ancestral land of the Kaiowá.