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Tlahui-Medic. No. 25, I/2008
Orality and Indigenous Medicine of the Americas: An
Epistemology of Ecological Awareness
Diplomado de Tlahui-Educa
Herbolaria, Temazcal, y
Medicina Tradicional Mexicana
Diplomate in Herbalism, Temazcal Sweat Lodge, and Traditional Mexican Medicine
Estudiante/Student: F. J. M.
Febrero/February, 2008
Introduction
Orality and literacy are powerful influences on human thought and consciousness
and can have a significant influence on all aspects of the "mentality" of a
culture. (Ong, 1982) In this paper I will focus on how orality influences the
epistemologies (i.e. basis and methods of knowledge) of Indigenous peoples of
the Americas and explore the connections between Indigenous American medicine
and Indigenous American ecological thought, discussing the ways in which the
intersubjective and holistic ecocentric perspective of Indigenous medicine can
help to heal our entire planet. In this paper I will often use the phrase
"Indigenous oral" (Abram, 1996) in my discussion in order to emphasize the
connection between Indigenous cultures of the Americas and the influence of
orality on traditional indigenous medicine which constitutes the focus of my
paper. Although orality is certainly not the only influence on medical thought
and the relationship of humans to Nature in Indigenous cultures, I feel that the
influence of orality on these cultures is significant, and is in need of being
studied because it is a neglected area of research in the study of traditional
Indigenous medicine. The study of orality-literacy differences is also important
because in our contemporary literate culture we are so immersed in literacy that
it is difficult for us to understand or even imagine how people from oral
cultures think. This paper will be written from an interdisciplinary
perspective, bringing contributions from literacy studies, linguistics and
philosophy to this discussion of this topic.
Some theorists in the field of orality/literacy studies have pointed out the
politically empowering characteristics of the acquisition of literacy. The
purpose of my paper is not to challenge this view (considering the obvious
benefits of literacy for these purposes) but only to point out the positive
values present within Indigenous medicine as an epistemology of Nature and
ecological awareness-something which I believe is crucial in today's world. For
a similar reason, the medical effects of traditional Indigenous therapies on
individual patients will also not be discussed in my paper since that would
treat a different topic. Nor do I intend to imply that Indigenous medicine of
the Americas is the only type of traditional medicine that is influenced by
orality-indeed there are many types of traditional medicine around the world
that involve the type of thinking present in my discussion of medicine and
epistemology of Indigenous oral peoples of the Americas. Furthermore,
appreciating the value of orality does not require a rejection of science, but
only the reaffirmation of the living planet Earth itself as the basis for our
awareness. I feel it should also be stressed that what I feel is the positive
ecological consciousness present in epistemologies of Indigenous Americans does
not necessarily require the conversion to a particular religion or doctrine, but
only the acquisition of a particular kind awareness or sensitivity to the
sensing and sensitive natural world.
The Shift from Orality to Literacy
Orality represents a very particular way of knowing the world - very distinct
from contemporary Western thought, which is under the influence of literacy.
According to the scholar of orality-literacy differences Walter J. Ong (1982),
orality is not a form of writing, and writing is not a form of orality. The two
have unique and different characteristics. Oral thinking is deeply rooted in the
life world and in the use of perceptual understanding and human senses to
understand the surrounding natural world. In an oral culture there is no
abstract separation of the knower from the known, no secondhand knowledge
separated from context, no feeling of separation from other people, from the
land, and from the nonhuman beings which share our planet. In oral cultures
there is a wider dialog which people from literate cultures tend not to
understand well, or not to take seriously, a dialog that is not with purely
human text, but with the entire world itself in a relationship, using language
of a more-than-human world, in a kind of "ecology of magic" (Abram, 1996). This
type of thinking is found in all members of Indigenous oral societies, and in
varying degrees in recently alphabetized Indigenous cultures (Ong, 1982).
Although criticized by some scholars as deterministic and generalistic, the
theory of the orality/literacy "great divide" on human consciousness can help
provide useful insights into the discussion of how humans came to loose their
intersubjective perceptual awareness rooted in the reality of the living natural
world.
Observing, and learning from Nature was part of the ancient animist/shamanist
tradition of the Americas. The processes of differentiation over time created
Indigenous cultures that were unique in terms of language, organization,
politics, society and economy; however there was always a common idea linking
all these cultures. This idea was one of the basic foundations of Indigenous
cultures, despite their variations. Indigenous Americans considered themselves
as being as part of a larger reality that included humans, culture, and society
together with Nature (Aparicio Mena, 2005b).
According to Ong (1982), the historical shift from orality to literacy has had
an important influence on the way humans perceive the world, by creating a
separation of the knower from the known, by removing context and the perception
of the life world, and leading to modern Western analytic thinking. Indeed,
nonhuman natural forces seem to have withdrawn both from language and from the
senses in modern literate society. According to David Abram (1996) with the
discovery and learning of written words, literate cultures lost something that
had been integral to oral traditions. With the written word, language, the
forest, the plants and animals fell silent and without meaning, and we have, in
a sense, become strangers in our own land.
According to this theory of "Animism and the Alphabet", when the Greeks adopted
and modified the Jewish alphabet and introduced letters to represent vowels
(because the Jewish alphabet used only consonants) the last gap through which
the natural world and a sense of the life world might breathe was closed off and
the first fully phonetic alphabet came into being. The alphabet becomes entirely
airtight and self-referential-without any need for interpretation and without
any references to other life forms other than the human (Abram, 1996).
The continents of the Americas where Indigenous culture and medicine flourished
were regions of orality-even though there were complex writing systems in the
Mesoamerican region. The painted books that were used in Mesoamerica were
basically oral texts, because they combined pictures with oral human speech/song
and required interpretation of images, unlike reading the phonetic alphabet.
These systems of orality-painting therefore served to maintain and support
orality, unlike chirographic (writing-based) systems (León Portilla, 2003). Much
as in Chinese script, these Indigenous American books (called codices) contained
rich images which directly linked to the lifeworld, with plants, animals, and
people in the environment being shown (Abram, 1996). After the Spanish conquest
however, many of these Mesoamerican codices were greatly changed during the
process of translation and cultural mixing so as to conform with what Ángel
María Garibay (1953) termed "the luminous prison of the alphabet."
With the development of the first fully self-contained alphabetic writing system
in ancient Greece, humans for the first time were able to be alone, and separate
from others, and could relate to each other and reflect on the world without any
reference to what is for the Indigenous oral peoples of the Americas considered
to be the source of all life and meaning-- the mysteries of the Earth itself and
a more-than-human field of meanings within Nature. The invention of the alphabet
established a direct association between the sign and the vocal sound, for the
first time completely bypassing the thing pictured. Because of this, the
more-than-human natural world was no longer part of the semiotic, no longer a
necessary part of the system. According to Ong (1982) contemporary Western
culture derives from this meeting of human senses and alphabet in ancient
Greece, and this type of thinking has infiltrated other cultures, even those
such as in the Asian cultures which still continue to use a writing system that
makes reference to the lifeworld.
According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty (as cited in Abram, 1996), an important
figure in the field of linguistics and phenomenology (the study of phenomena as
they manifest themselves to the experience) the direct, prereflective perception
of the world is inherently synestheic (using all the senses together), and is
participatory and animistic, disclosing the things and elements that surround us
as expressive subjects, entities and powers. Each thing in the world, and each
phenomena in the world has the power to reach us and to influence us, therefore,
according to this view every phenomena in Nature is expressive. We all have the
capacity to communicate with nature, and for nature to communicate with us.
The act of reading an alphabetic text involves a kind of synethesia that was
once used for understanding plants and animals of the lifeworld. According to
Merleau-Ponty (as cited in Abram, 1996), just as there is an optic chasm, there
is a "chasm" between all the sense modalities where they continually couple and
collaborate with one another. The act of reading an alphabetic text involves
"hearing" what the writer wishes to convey to us by using our eyes. An interplay
of different senses is also what enables the chasm of communication between the
body and the surrounding world. Synestheic perception is the rule among all life
on Earth, however literate people are largely unaware of it only because
scientific knowledge shifts the center of gravity of experience to written text,
creating a loop between writers and their self-contained words-a loop which has
cycled upon itself without the presence of surrounding Nature.
There has been a historical progression from oral, perceptually saturated
culture to a more rationalistic culture which emphasizes separateness which is
under the influence of alphabetic writing. Western culture has moved away from
an engaged, intimate, empathetic and participatory understanding of the world,
leading to an impoverishment in awareness and perception, while among Indigenous
oral peoples the primal understanding of the world is retained (Abram, 1996).
Orality and Intersubjectivity
In Western philosophy, Phenomenology may be the tradition that comes closest to
Indigenous oral thought, since it was the tradition that most called into
question the idea of a single, wholly determinable, objective reality. According
to the phenomenologist and linguist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (as cited in Abram,
1996), humans are all born with the ability to experience and respond to the
sentient Earth in a kind of dialog or interaction. For example, the act of
breathing is actually in reciprocity with the air according to this view-"when I
breath out and when I breath in the air enters me and I am not completely
separate or autonomous with the air." The air in other words is not a passive
entity but an animic force coming to me when I summon it. In other words, as the
anthropologist and philosopher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (as cited in Abram, 1996)
states, "perception is participation." The human body is a kind of circuit which
completes itself in the world. This requires a change in thought-in which
perceptual reciprocity becomes the key to understanding our interactions with a
living Earth.
In Indigenous oral cultures the tree bending in the wind, the cliff wall, or the
clouds are not merely subjective, they are intersubjective phenomena, phenomena
experienced by a multitude of sensing objects. The modern assumption of
objectivity has led to an almost total forgetting of the lifeworld in the modern
era, yet it is this lifeworld in which all human endeavors are rooted. This
lifeworld is our immediately lived experience as we live it, prior to all our
thoughts about it. It is present in our everyday tasks and enjoyments-it is
reality before being analyzed and engaged by theories and science-and infact,
theories and science could not exist without it. Whenever we seek to explain
this world conceptually, we seem to forget our active participation in it.
Striving to represent the world, we forget its direct presence.
In the field of linguistics, the majority of linguists follow the theory of
Ferdinand de Saussure (as cited in Abram, 1996), which maintained that there is
an arbitrariness between the vocal sounds and that which they signify, however
there also exists another theory in linguistics that maintains that gesture,
mimicry and onomatopoeia may have been at the origin of human language. In other
words the genesis of language itself may have originated in preverbal
communication between the human body and surrounding nonhuman Nature. We are
embodied beings, and we learn language through our body, according to
Merleau-Ponty (as cited in Abram, 1996). Many authentically Indigenous tribes
use imitation of animal communication, ways of walking, and so on in order to
better hunt and this type of knowledge is essential to their survival. There
have been many cases recorded of hunters even communicating among themselves
using animal languages. Therefore, according to this theory, it is not the human
body alone, but rather the whole world of the senses all together that provides
the deep structure of language, so in a sense the animate world speaks within
us. Language is not a purely mental phenomenon but living, embodied, and
constantly shaped though reciprocity and participation. The complex interchange
we call "language" is rooted in the non-verbal exchange already going on between
our "flesh" and the "flesh" of the world. Our senses express and respond to the
living natural world and the living natural world expresses itself and responds
to our senses. Experientially considered, language is not the exclusive property
of humans. Language writes Merleau-Ponty (as cited in Abram, 1996) "is the very
voice of the trees, the waves, the forests".
What have often been called "primitive languages" of "illiterate cultures"
actually represent a reservoir of holistic knowledge that conserves a view of
the world that is far richer and more inclusive than our own literate culture.
Oral-indigenous cultures still maintain a profound awareness of the importance
of the creative cosmos, the knowing body (which is a unified bodymind), and
knowledge of place. The orality present in many of these cultures can include
sounds that exist within its ecosystem, allowing not only intra-species
communication but inter-species communication (Abram, 1996). Developments in
interspecies communication suggests that "language" can be considered in a
broader sense. Anthropology once defined humans as being unique because of the
ability to use language. Now due to recent studies of animal communication, much
of this belief is finally being eroded (Walker, 2001).
Orality, Traditional Medicine, and the Cosmic Equilibrium
In the Indigenous oral cultures of the Mesoamerican region, Nature is seen as
forming a unity with a philosophical tradition based on harmony,
interconnection, and equilibrium in the lifeworld. The duality of life and death
are part of this unity. Health and illness are the result of equilibrium or
disequilibrium of the elements that compose this underlying unity of reality
and/ or its functions. Plants are not seen in this tradition as vegetables and
nothing more, but as fully living beings, and a part of the Earth and Nature as
a whole. For this reason they are believed to cure (or harm depending on use and
relationship to them), and because of this, they have been used since ancient
times to restore equilibrium-which is what Indigenous cultures see as health (Aparicio
Mena, 2005b).
For people from a Western educational background, the study of medicine means to
follow a Western mindset and to follow the path of science. For a traditional
Indigenous person from an oral culture in Mesoamerica however, the use of direct
perception and the senses in the lifeworld to understand Nature is a way of
life. Plants, as with the rest of Nature is part of an "energy" or "ample
reality", something which the writer Chica Casarola (as cited in Aparicio Mena,
2005b) termed "multireality [la multirrealidad]." The bodymind which is a part
of nature, is a system that actively seeks homeostasis. For traditional
Indigenous oral cultures in the Mesoamerican region, health is seen as the
balance of energies and continuous adaptation and regulation of elements which
compose the social environment, the natural environment, the cultural
environment, and the spiritual environment, all in a relationship of
interconnectedness. (Aparicio Mena, 2005b).
Because of its transitory and contextual nature, in oral cultures the visible
breath is the spoken word, and this impermanence makes the word more valuable
and more "living" to these peoples. Spoken words and ability to speak well are
taken very seriously in oral cultures (Ong, 1982). Spoken words are seen to have
powerful, magical qualities, and in these cultures words can be used for
purposes such as healing. Some Indigenous cultures in the Americas believe that
information about plant medicines may emanate from the plant itself, through
dreams, visions, or the plant communicating with them directly (Buhner, 1996).
Orality emphasizes intuitive and situational-based knowledge, and there is a
great deal more influence from the unconscious mind and holistic thought (Ong,
1982).
Indigenous healers note that the human in making contact with plants, one must
enter into the world of plants, and into a special sacred time, and not as a
human who is "superior" and who knows everything, but as a seeker who has come
to learn from the plant. Indeed, humans are considered to be dependent on the
plants and the plants are the ones who are considered superior to humans. Many
traditional healers have the belief that plants can talk to humans and that
humans can talk to plants and that to talk with the plants (or any object)
through mutual perception and communication and that this requires the
accumulation of spiritual power. In Indigenous medicine there is a strong
element of being able to converse with plants and between species to exchange
information (Buhner, 1996).
According to Walter Ong (1982), song, because of its rhythm and emotional effect
is very important in oral cultures since it serves as a mnemonic device in a
culture that does not have alphabetic script. In Mesoamerica, the use of song is
often mentioned when discussing the Calmecac schools, and it is likely that song
was widely used in many other Mesoamerican educational contexts as well due to
the characteristics of orality. Chirographic culture is fundamentally biased
towards the visual, while oral cultures on the other hand, are more multisensory
and with an emphasis on the auditory according to Ong. The idea of songs (music)
with its poetic and emotive orientation is also keeping with the emphasis on the
unconscious nature of oral thought. In Indigenous oral cultures, songs come from
the elements, from the plants, and from animals. This means that in Indigenous
oral cultures as in all oral cultures, people do not "study" in the Western
sense, but are apprenticed. Apprenticeship in plant medicine in some Indigenous
oral cultures for example, might require that the student spend long periods of
time with each plant and learn its song. To complete the training, the student
would be expected to sing the song of each plant being used. This can still be
seen today in a number of contemporary Indigenous cultures.
In a world without alphabetic books such as in Indigenous oral cultures of the
Americas there is also out of necessity a direct participation between the
various keepers of knowledge. Among people who use the encyclopedia of plant
songs in some of the Indigenous cultures of the Americas for instance, there is
often the recognition of the power of another person's song and at times they
might wish to obtain the song. If the owner of the song decided to sell it, an
exchange would be agreed upon, and the owner would "teach the song, explain its
use, and show a specimen of the herb to be employed with it." (Buhner, 1996)
The passing down to future generations of Indigenous oral languages through the
tradition of the spoken word used in the lifeworld helps to ensure the spread of
the ideas and concepts contained within these languages (Aparicio Mena, 2005a).
According to Ong (1982), oral cultures tend to give greater emphasis to
community and respect for elders compared with literate cultures because memory
is fundamental to the preservation of knowledge-these are cultures that are
deeply attached to tradition. Furthermore, reading is a solitary, individual
activity, while in orality, this private space is nonexistent. It is important
to note that much of the "New Age Movement" (which was developed within the
Western context) has appropriated expressions of Indigenous oral thought to
market a solitary individual's ambition of personal improvement-but this is not
an authentic Indigenous viewpoint. In the true thought of Indigenous oral
peoples, traditional healers do not work only for the self-help of individuals
with their personal goals, but more importantly, on behalf of their entire
communities' well-being and survival, with the word "community" interpreted in
the widest possible sense to include surrounding environment of their
area-plants, animals, and society (Walker, 2001).
Because the senses of an oral people are contextual, still attuned to the world
around them, still conversant with the expressiveness of Nature, time is seen as
cyclical and rooted to each living being. Time in such as world is not separable
from the circular life of the sun and the moon, from the cycling of the seasons,
the death and rebirth of the animals-from the "eternal return" of the greening
Earth. In oral speech there is repetition due to the nature of oral memory, and
because unlike alphabetic writing, orality cannot exist outside of the instant
in which the word is spoken. Perhaps influenced by this, Indigenous peoples in
ancient Mesoamerican believed that natural phenomena and human acts submerge
themselves and become immersed with qualities peculiar to each place and each
instant. Each "place-instant", a complex of location and time, determines in an
irresistible and foreseeable way everything that happens to exist within it
(Chevalier & Sanchez Bain, 2003).
We can see how in oral training such as in Indigenous medicine there is a clear
contrast with the characteristics of literate thought, which according to Walter
Ong (1982): (1) Distances the knower from the known (2) Is detached (from the
writer) (3) Promotes exteriorization of thought (4) Encourages people to see
themselves situated in time with linear categorical thinking.
Taxonomy, Rhetoric, and the Interconnection between Humans and Nature
Being from oral cultures does not mean that Indigenous peoples lack or have
lacked detailed knowledge of the natural world. Indigenous oral peoples can
often observe and know the plants of their world better than many Western
botanists. They can often identify and name each plant in their territory in any
stage of growth, from seedling to dead leaf. According to Bonfil Battalia
(1989/1996) for example, Indigenous languages are far richer than Spanish in
describing different parts of the corn plant and of corn in different stages of
life. Some systems of plant identification are more complex and precise than
those currently in use by Western botanists (Buhner, 1996).
Orality influences systems of classification - everything must be memorized,
therefore systems of classification are by necessity very different from those
in Western culture. This can explain why things similar in form and function are
grouped together, for example in the Aztec medical classification of the human
body. Oral discourse according to Ong (1982) is formulaic in style and these
formulas are based on clusters which constitute the organizing principles of the
formulas. Oral thinking is non-linear. In Alfredo López 's classic work The
Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas (1980/1988) this can
be evidenced in the Aztec terms that mention classes-like the one that includes
all parts of the body that are striated (acaliuhca); those that include
all tubes (acayotl, piazyotl, cocotl); the one that unites everything
communicating with outside (tlecallotl), and the one that groups all
curves together (coliuhca). As for criteria for defining functions, some
of the 3 groups are "folders," "doublers," or "breakers" (nepoztecya,
poztecca, necuelpachoaya, zazaliuhca, necuazaloliztli, cotozauhca, nepicyantli),
with some specific differences: the parts of the body that seem to open and
close an orifice (motzoliuhca), those used for throwing objects (mayahuia),
those that protect a person (nepalehuiaya), those used in running (tlaczayatl)
and those used out to carry out man's wishes (tlatecoaca). Here similar
things are grouped together in clusters even if they are part of different
bodily systems and located in different parts of the body.
According to Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962/1966) the mind of Indigenous oral
peoples, "the savage mind" is totalizing. According to López Austin (1980/1988),
in any society where mythical thought predominates, there is a tendency to
equate the different taxonomic systems and to look for corresponding elements in
different processes, natural as well as social. Various ideas are compounded
together, and there is an attempt to seek equivalent meanings and parallelisms
among different classification systems in an attempt to discover the supreme
congruency and total order in the universe. The goal is to reach the great
classificatory synthesis, the maximum cognitive and norm setting instrument of
existence. The effort to project different taxonomic systems on one another
creates links among elements from very different areas of classification, and
the semiotic complexes are enriched by relationships produced by the supreme
synthesis. In this way, a given color, a mineral, a plants species, a cardinal
direction, an animal etc. may be classified as equivalents until a general
classification system is formed, containing innumerable slots to which the
corresponding elements of different taxonomic systems are distributed.
There are abundant Indigenous American examples of links between the different
cosmic levels; origin myths speak of gods from whose dead bodies sprang
different plant species, each one possessing to a certain degree, a resemblance
to the corporeal area from which it came; the rising and setting of stars is
equated to an identical course in man's gestation or to the germination of
seeds; the names and parts of tree parts or the components of a house usually
derive from those of the human organism, or the parts of the human body are
matched to different levels of the universe while the divisions of animal
species open into taxonomic fans. Interestingly, in Nahuatl, the name most
commonly applied to the human body, considered as a whole, uses only the
predominant element: "the whole of our flesh" (tonacayo). This same term
is applied to the fruits of the Earth, especially the most important one for
Indigenous North Americans-maize, thus forming a profound metaphoric link
between human corporeal being and the food to which humans owe their existence
in Indigenous societies (López Austin, 1980/1988).
Humans and natural cycles are inseparably linked in Indigenous culture, and
medical thought reflects this holism. For example, according to Chevalier &
Sanchez Bain (2003), a hot-cold dichotomy involving concepts of balance, cyclic
movement, and heliotropic growth is central to the Mesoamerican concept of
medicine and pervades the ways in which people think about their relationships
to the land and the entities that surrounds them. The Indigenous medical system
of health (which is perceived as balance) is based on a hot/cold dualism,
however this dualism is not limited only to the human organism, but also to the
health of plants cultivated in the cornfield. It is not possible to study
Indigenous medicine if it does not include the complete study of the holistic
world view of Indigenous peoples and the dynamic connections between humans,
plants, and spiritual forces as they affect illness.
According to Ong (1982), use of metaphor, similitude, and repetition (as in
poetry and song) is an important part of everyday orality, and elevates speaking
to an art form. In the Nahuatl language according to Abbot (1987) metaphor and
similitude and repetition are infact one of the most fundamental features of
this language. The Huehuetlatolli, or "Ancient Word" which was compiled
by Bernard de Sahagún in the years immediately following the Spanish conquest of
Mexico, is considered a key text that contains excellent samples of Indigenous
oral rhetoric used in various life situations, including medical situations.
According to Abbot (1987), Bernardo de Sahagún's work is one of the most
complete accounts of the rhetoric of preliterate oral cultures. Garibay (1953)
mentions that paired metaphors are typically found in the same sentence in
Nahuatl Indigenous rhetoric and are used to convey the same thought which is
something which he calls "difrasismo." Aztec rhetoric is brief, aphoristic, and
repetitive. According to Ong (1982) the psychodynamics of orality can be
characterized as being structurally additive rather than subordinative,
stylistically copious and redundant, and stylistically conservative. This is in
keeping with the need in oral cultures to memorize knowledge in order to
conserve it by means of repetition and providing large quantities of strong
imagery to what is being told, as well as making the constant repetition more
palatable and more interesting by use of metaphor. This use of metaphor in oral
cultures also can mean that a sense of interconnectedness or linking of ideas
between many different kinds things.
Bonfil Batalla (1989/1996) mentions that that indigenous languages in the
Mesoamerican region still continue to guard, protect, and pass on to future
generations who speak these languages the Indigenous oral culture of ancient
times with its cosmology and world view. Every culture can be seen as a unique
experiment in the human encounter with the nature of reality, an experiment
conducted over extremely long lengths of time. Therefore the loss of any
language represents the loss of unique information about the nature of the
universe that may have taken thousands of years to gather. In other words,
language and cultural epistemology are closely connected. However, much as
natural diversity is being reduced and homogenized to support the goals of the
global economy, so too is linguistic and cultural diversity (Buhner, 2002).
Scientific Reductionism, Holism, and Life on the Planet
Western Medicine, a product of the self-contained alphabetic mindset, is based
on a belief in complete anthropocentrism and in scientific reductionism.
Indigenous oral epistemology however, as we have seen, comes out of a different
perception of reality, one which is profoundly influenced by oral holistic
thought. That reality is encoded in the Indigenous American concept of "Mother
Earth" and conveys the idea that the Earth is a single living being. This
awareness seems to be present in all Indigenous societies. (Buhner, 2002).
Indeed, Mircea Eliade in his work Shamanism and the Archaic Techniques of
Ecstasy (as cited in Aparicio Mena 2005a) speaks of a "pachamamaism" present
in all the Indigenous cultures of the Americas and believes that we can see the
traces of a single ancient shamanic ideological system stretching from Alaska to
Tierra del Fuego."
This belief in "Mother Earth" still survives in the syncretic consciousness of
most Mexicans today-with the element of identification with the creative forces
of Nature clearly as the Indigenous link. Furthermore it is not surprising that
the Indigenous American Sweat Lodge (which is returning to popularity in
contemporary Mexico) symbolically represents the womb, and at the same time, the
Earth. According to the Mexican writer Guillermo Marín (as cited in Aparicio
Mena, 2005b), in the ancient Mexican tradition, the Earth is not an object to be
exploited and dominated, but rather is seen as a dearly loved mother, the mother
of humanity and indeed of all life, a mother who is close to her children.
According to Alfredo Lopez-Austin, complex cultures developed with powerful
state ideology and systems of control in Mesoamerica, yet Mesoamerica has been
said to be the only major world "civilization" that remained basically animist
in its world view (López Austin, 1980/1988). According to Marin (as cited in
Aparicio Mena, 2005b) in Mexico there is a feeling of deep love between humans
and the Earth.
The belief in the fundamental importance of the natural world is one of
Indigenous America's most profound dimensions and contributions to humanity
according to Bonfil Batalla (1989/1996). It is impossible to understand any
aspect of any Indigenous American culture without understanding this. In
Indigenous American culture unlike Western culture, the natural world is not
seen as an enemy, nor is it assumed that greater human self-realization is
achieved through greater separation from Nature. To the contrary, a person's
condition as part of the cosmic order is recognized and the aspiration is toward
permanent integration which can be achieved only through a harmonious
relationship with the rest of the natural world (Bonfil Batalla, 1989/1996). For
Western-educated people, under the influence of literacy however, this type of
thinking has been rediscovered to some extent only recently with the maverick
scientist James Lovelock's work which he called the "Gaia Hypothesis." Lovelock,
examining the Earth's ecosystem, noticed that it was self-regulating, and began
to think of it as a single physiological system. As Lovelock states (as cited in
Buhner 2002):
This top-down view of the Earth as a single system, one that I call Gaia, is
essentially physiological. It is concerned with the working of the whole system,
not with the separated parts of a planet divided arbitrarily.
Buhner (2002) states that Western culture puts thinking above all else (Decartés
"Cogito Ergo Sum" which, in simple terms can be described as "I think therefore
I am"), a theory which maintains that only "thinking" beings are of value. This
has led to a vision of the universe lacking any intrinsic value of its own apart
from human use. Rather believing in having animal counterparts and plant
teachers in the sensing and sensitive surrounding natural world, as in
Indigenous oral thought, humans are considered completely separate from other
creatures, and indeed people who are considered inferior have often been
considered "closer to the animals" or "less than human" according to the type of
thinking based on this paradigm. Feelings and sensory perception have been
removed from what is considered "valid discourse" about the natural world. And
there is no feeling of cosmic debt to the natural world. Humanity has adopted
increasingly limiting epistemologies which effectively separate humans from
other beings. The mechanistic denial of relationship and process as
fundamentally constitutive to our being has delivered Western culture to the
point that only separateness, fragmentation, and human-made constructs seem
real. The adoption of philosophies based on scientific/medical reductionism, has
taken the anti-Nature paradigm even further, resulting in surrounding Nature
being seen as something alien to humanity, and as a force that needs to be
controlled, exploited, and desecrated. Humans feel exempt from Nature's laws and
the consequences of human actions. The result is that humanity destroys Nature,
with its phytocommunication systems and animal communication systems, while at
the same time destroying itself. This kind of anti-Nature perspective has never
been part of Indigenous oral cosmology, and has recently come under criticism
from proponents of the "deep ecology" movement (Buhner, 2002).
Recently, deep ecologists have been discussing the concepts of Biofilia
and Biognosis as intrinsically valid ways of knowing the world.
Biofilia according to Edward Wilson (as cited in Buhner, 2002) is the innate
feeling or caring for living life forms or systems. "Reading" Nature in this way
can eventually lead to Biognosis which is the direct in-depth knowledge
of Nature that cannot be reduced to a collection of bits of accumulated
information. It is an ecocentric way of understanding the world which
empathically understands the interconnection and interdependence of everything
that is the sentient universe. It is an awareness of the balance of a
self-organizing, self-healing system. According to Buhner (2002), the dominant,
reductionist, "universe as a machine" ideology of today has led to the
suppression of this type of thinking in all fields, and all aspects of life,
including the suppression of the traditional medicine of Indigenous oral
peoples.
Medicine of Indigenous Oral Peoples and the Environment
In the Indigenous world-view, many illnesses are explained by the intervention
of powerful forces. These forces act to punish conduct considered unacceptable
because it constitutes a transgression of norms insuring harmony between human
beings, and the harmony between humans and Nature. (Bonfil Batalla, 1989/1996).
According to the Mexican writer Guillermo Marín, it will indeed be Nature itself
that will force humans to appreciate the ancient Indigenous epistemology of
Nature, once global warming and other changes caused by human transgressions
against Nature begin to make themselves be noticed (G. Marín, personal
communication, July 10, 2007).
It is ironic that many of the things Western medicine is doing in order to cure
diseases and make human beings feel healthier are actually polluting the
environment and causing many of the diseases in the first place. Contemporary
Western allopathic medicine, detached as it is from the world of wild plants and
from wild Nature as a whole is responsible for a wide range of environmental
problems.
For example, pharmaceutical products, which are not a normal part of diet, nor a
food previously encountered in evolution are a major source of pollution.
Pharmaceutical companies produce large quantities of pharmaceutical waste, and
even when the waste is treated, the pharmaceutical substances often remain. Most
pharmaceuticals are designed to resist breakdown and to persist so that they can
carry out their metabolic regulatory activities without interference from the
human body. Unknown to most people, enormous quantities of pharmaceuticals and
their metabolites are even contaminating the environment through their own
bodies by means of excretion, where they are proving to have powerfully negative
impacts in ecosystems, and these quantities are increasing everyday. Most
pharmaceutical waste is not biodegradable and goes on producing chemical effects
forever. Most that does biodegrade is regularly replenished by the need for
continual dosing or by new medical prescriptions for new people. Many waste
products stay in their original forms for months, years, or even centuries, and
many pharmaceuticals concentrate in the stored fat of all creatures and effects
on nontarget animals are usually unknown. In addition to pharmaceutical waste,
there is waste from personal care products, infectious medical and pathological
waste, and waste from chemotherapy and radioactive substances. Hazardous waste
from medical treatments may work itself into the environment even from
cemeteries.
Another example of a major problem is the use of antibiotics. Due to the germ
theory of contagion, germs and microbes have become considered enemies even
though they form part of the natural balance of the Earth. Antibiotic waste from
antibiotic use is a part of pharmaceutical waste and many anti-biotics
(literally "against-life") do not discriminate in their activity--disrupting the
entire ecosystem. In the long run, the massive use of antibiotics suggests the
possibility of the emergence in the near future of infectious disease elements
more potent and deadly than any in history due to the natural development of
resistance.
Traditional plant medicine used by Indigenous oral peoples on the other hand,
are ecological, in keeping with their ecocentric world-view. Plant medicines are
ecological because they do not require expensive factories to make them, they do
not discharge pollutants into the environment, have far fewer side effects
(internally and externally), are sustainable, renewable, come from within local
ecosystems, and the knowledge of their use is diffused in the cultures that use
them.
This is not to imply a complete and total rejection of Western medicine in favor
of Indigenous Medicine-infact it is usually Western medicine that rejects
Indigenous Medicine, and not the other way around, since indigenous medicine is
holistic and inclusive by its very definition and nature. However an important
philosophical point is revealed-just because humans are doing something to
alleviate human suffering does not mean that we are exempt from the ecological
consequences of doing it. Traditional indigenous medicine is different from
Western medicine because it unselfishly takes into account the perspective of
the plant and of the entire ecosystem, and not only the perspective of human
beings. They literally are able to understand the plant's point of view-the
world perspective of the living organism itself together with the ecosystem.
Humans today are struggling due to problems caused by a wrong value system - an
unintegrated value system. According to the Nature writer David Orr (as cited in
Buhner, 2002), the highly technical language of today's medical "experts" is
useful for describing fragments of the world, but not how the world fits into a
coherent whole - leading to environmental catastrophe. Language becomes
increasingly artificial, and words and metaphors based on intimate knowledge of
soils, plants, trees, animals, landscapes, rivers and oceans have declined.
Humans have forgotten the wildness and sacredness of the world, and the natural
ability to interact with, to learn from, and to communicate with the surrounding
living world in a sustainable way-indeed this is what is stolen from us through
contemporary schooling practices and indoor-based Western culture (Buhner,
2002). Dominant schooling practices today teach belief in scientific and
technological progress without noting the many side-effects, and this is
paradigm is accepted uncritically by large numbers of people who only see what
could be gained without seeing what is lost. The linguist and social critic Ivan
Illich mentions how the current medical and educational systems control and mold
people into narrow-minded "experts" that the contemporary economic system
requires for itself, and discusses how members of contemporary society need to
be "deschooled" in order to really learn (1970).
Homero Ardijis, the Mexican ecologist mentions how the twin evils of ecocide and
ethnocide have disrupted the cultures of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas
(Aridjis, 1992). Today many languages and oral traditions are dying and we see
that of the roughly 5,000 languages now spoken on our planet, only 150 or so are
expected to survive to the year 2100. Language everywhere (much like what is
happening in the natural world) is being narrowed and whittled down to conform
to the limited objectives and needs of the dominant world culture and the
hegemony of the contemporary global economic system (Buhner, 2002).
Conclusion
I believe that to understand traditional Indigenous epistemologies of Nature
coming from non-Western Indigenous oral cultures, it is necessary to put aside
the idea that there is only one valid way of understanding the world (the
chirographic-based Eurocentric Western epistemology), and to accept that the
epistemology of the "Other" can also have its validity and its use. Oral
cultures and their healing traditions have been pushed aside in favor literate
ways of seeing the world. Yet there is much that can be learned from these
cultures. Indeed, healers from Indigenous oral cultures are of great importance
in today's world because they see the pattern that connects, and because they
have a functional sense of basic unity. The perspective of Indigenous medicine
can be important for the healing of the planet itself.
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Curso de Etnomedicina y Herbolaria Mexicana
Mexican Ethnomedicine and Herbalist Course
Cours d'ethnomédecine et phytothérapie mexicaine
Diplomado en Medicina Tradicional de México y sus Plantas Medicinales
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