Oral Testimonies of Traditional Medicine A Kamëntša Woman’s Legacy
Rozalia Agioutanti, MS, Yesenia Cortés
Volume 25, Number 2 (2026) 25 (2): 100-124
Keywords Kamëntša traditional medicine, Indigenous oral testimony, Indigenous women and healing, Ancestral women’s knowledge, Traditional midwifery, Indigenous herbal medicine, Chagra and territory, Indigenous spirituality and healing, Indigenous cultural resilience, Sibundoy Valley (Colombia)
Abstract
This article presents an oral testimony of Mamita Maria Dolores, a Kamëntša elder and healer from the Sibundoy Valley in southwest Colombia. Through an interview, the author documents the intertwined dimensions of Kamëntša ancestral knowledge, women’s roles, healing practices, and the cultural significance of the chagra. Mamita’s narratives reveal how spirituality, plant medicine, storytelling, and communal labor sustain Kamëntša identity amid the enduring impacts of colonization, language loss, and social change. Her personal history—rooted in midwifery, uterine care, herbal medicine, and community leadership—embodies the resilience and continuity of Indigenous women’s knowledge. The article blends ethnographic reflection with lived testimony, offering a window into a worldview in which healing, land, memory, and womanhood remain profoundly interconnected.
Rozalia Agioutanti, MS
Yesenia Cortés
Published January 14, 2026
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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