Through the oral reporting of memories of the descendants of old "quilombadas", the present article analyzes the daily practices of midwives, healers and their descendants in the region of Tocantins, in Pará - north of the Amazon. Beside the attendance to childbirth, those women carried out a series of activities related to the processes of cures and manipulation of medicinal plants, as well as tasks for survival, many of them not always considered in other areas and cultures as being compatible with activities of the feminine sex. This article thus contributes to rethinking the importance of the study of daily practices for the knowledge of the different roles played by women and men in gender relations, including forms of domination in a specific society.
Midwives; attendance to childbirth; cures; orality and gender in the Amazon