Objective: to understand the experiences of nursing care for indigenous patients in an intercultural context.Materials and methods: qualitative study, guided by the ethnographic method, combined documentary review, observation and ethnographic interview carried out with 26 people, 12 nurses, 3 social workers, 1 manager of an institution providing indigenous health services and 10 indigenous people.Results: the experiences were evidenced from the representations about the care of the indigenous patient, generally seen as a difficult situation, due to their pathologies, hygiene and rejection of the care actions.Communication was another of the aspects that marked the experience, due to the difficulty of handling different languages.The strategies and interventions were another determining factor of them, mainly their empirical development, far from the theoretical intercultural nursing support.Conclusion: there is a need to advance in the overcoming of ethnocentric practices for the improvement of the quality and humanization of nursing care in an intercultural context.