The mission of Troca de Saberes is to protect traditional healing methods, build supportive networks across Indigenous peoples, and promote biocultural continuity in the face of knowledge erasure and biodiversity loss.
At a time of expanding global markets for Indigenous medicines and healing practices, alongside growing scientific and commercial interest in digital sequence information and more-than-human and ancestral intelligence—including the intelligence and communication of plants, fungi, animals, and ecosystems—the vulnerability of Indigenous knowledge has become increasingly urgent. Indigenous healers and knowledge holders continue to report the appropriation and commercialisation of their medicines, practices, and knowledge without consent, benefit-sharing, or biocultural recognition.
Emerging research into more-than-human intelligence and biodiversity digital sequencing may intensify these risks by translating relational and spiritual knowledge into data, intellectual property, and commercial technologies while disregarding the Indigenous peoples who have sustained relationships with these beings for generations. Such practices may reproduce colonial patterns of extraction, extending them from territories and biological materials to knowledge, relationships, and more-than-human beings themselves.
Troca de Saberes responds to this challenge by affirming Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. This unprecedented intercultural initiative brought together representatives of more than 24 Indigenous peoples from the Amazon and other regions to exchange traditional medicines, healing practices, experiences, and governance strategies. Led by Indigenous women, it created a safe space for dialogue, collective decision-making, policy development, and the defence of ancestral knowledge and the more-than-human beings through whom that knowledge is generated and transmitted.
Building on this gathering, the project seeks to develop a secure, community-controlled digital registry in Indigenous languages, alongside an Indigenous biocultural protocol governing access and benefit-sharing. Together, these tools will help ensure that research, documentation, and potential commercial uses are guided by Indigenous governance, free, prior and informed consent, and equitable benefit-sharing.
The initiative offers a timely and adaptable model for safeguarding living systems of medicine and knowledge while enabling innovation grounded in bioethics, reciprocity, and respect. Its purpose is not simply to preserve information, but to protect the relationships among Indigenous peoples, territories, medicines, ancestors, and other beings that have sustained life for millennia, ensuring that their futures remain guided by the peoples who have cared for them across generations.
Strengthening and preserving traditional Indigenous medicines
Through the exchange of practices and knowledge among the participating Indigenous peoples, the initiative aims to ensure that these traditions remain alive and are passed on to future generations.
Core Objectives
Empowering women and highlighting their roles in biocultural conservation
Recognizing and showcasing women’s contributions during all phases of the meeting, from organization to implementation, fostering their leadership in rituals and practices, and strengthening their involvement in future initiatives to ensure equitable and inclusive efforts.
Promoting the value and integration of Indigenous culture into public policies
By discussing crucial issues such as the inclusion of traditional medicines in healthcare systems and the protection of Indigenous knowledge against biopiracy, the initiative seeks to influence public policies that respect and integrate this knowledge.
Creating and strengthening collaboration networks among Indigenous peoples
The formation of networks is essential to ensure that traditional knowledge is shared and protected, facilitating cooperation between different peoples and promoting the continuity of these practices.
Protecting traditional knowledge against unauthorized appropriation
Given the growing threat of biopiracy and the unauthorized use of Indigenous knowledge, the meeting addresses the need to create legal and community mechanisms that ensure the protection and fair distribution of benefits derived from this knowledge.
Safeguarding More-than-Human Rights and Relational Knowledge
To protect the rights, agency, and integrity of ancestral and more-than-human beings, together with the relational knowledge generated through their connections with Indigenous peoples and territories, by strengthening Indigenous-led governance grounded in reciprocity, free, prior and informed consent, and respect for the living relationships that sustain this knowledge.
July 2027 | Amazonas, Brazil
Troca de Saberes 2027:
The 2nd Ancestral Knowledge Sharing Gathering
The 2nd Ancestral Knowledge Sharing Gathering will continue the process begun in 2024, bringing together different Indigenous peoples to strengthen medicines, spiritualities, healing practices, memory and strategies for protecting traditional knowledge.
The gathering will focus on:
Strengthening the exchange among pajés/shamans, healers, benzedeiras (traditional blessing healers), midwives, raizeiras (root and plant medicine keepers) and young apprentices
Valuing Indigenous medicines as living systems of care and relational knowledge, while advancing the recognition and protection of the rights, agency, and integrity of the ancestral and more-than-human beings through whom these medicines and knowledge are sustained.
Discussing ways to protect against misappropriation, commercialization and unauthorized use of traditional knowledge
Advancing the development of an Indigenous Biocultural Protocol
Discussing the creation of a secure intercultural registry, led by Indigenous peoples themselves
Promoting dialogue with SESAI / DSEI - the Indigenous Health Secretariat - on the recognition, safeguarding and strengthening of Indigenous medicines within the framework of differentiated healthcare.