Abstract

SANTOS, Johnnata Silva dos. Anticolonial medical education: territories, environmental justice, and Indigenous knowledge in the face of the climate crisis. Rev Pan-Amaz Saude [online]. 2025, vol.16, e202501738.  Epub Oct 30, 2025. ISSN 2176-6215.  http://dx.doi.org/10.5123/s2176-6223202501738.

The climate crisis has severely impacted Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, who face extractivism, commodification of life, and epistemicide. Hegemonic biomedicine often reduces these harms to "individual risk factors", detaching suffering from its territorial context. This paper reports on the discussion circle "Climate Crisis, Health, and Territories: Indigenous Learnings for Family and Community Medicine" (FCM), organized by the Amazonian Multidisciplinary League for Indigenous Health during the 18th Brazilian Congress of FCM (Manaus, June 2025). The event aimed to reveal the links among green capitalism, environmental racism, and collective illness, and to co-create strategies for an antiracist medical practice in Primary Health Care (PHC). The methodology involved a dialogical, intercultural, and participatory activity with 20 participants (students, physicians, Indigenous leaders, and PHC professionals), structured in five stages: welcoming; sharing experiences; "body-territory" activity; case analysis; and collective proposal building. Results highlighted the climate crisis as a structural determinant of health, with Indigenous knowledge presented as solutions, including food sovereignty and forest medicine. Indigenous youth played a key role in bridging traditional and contemporary knowledge. Three proposals emerged: 1) decolonizing medical training through Amazonian case studies; 2) territorialized clinical practice with immersion in Indigenous territories and engagement with shamans; and 3) international advocacy for FCM in global forums. The discussion circle demonstrates the potential of social technologies to rethink medical education, reaffirming that healing territories is inseparable from healing bodies, and advocating for an anticolonial FCM committed to socio-environmental justice.

Keywords : Social Determination of Health; Indigenous Health; Climate Change; Family and Community Medicine; Health Education; Community Participation.

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