August 27, 2010 by Mirjam Hirch.

Indigenous doctors from throughout the Pacific are currently meeting during the Pacific Region Indigenous Doctors Congress (PRIDoC) at Whistler, Canada home to the Squamish and Lil’wat First Nations. Born from the vision of a forum for mutual support and for the sharing of resources and expertise delegates are coming together to learn and teach one another.
Underlying factors behind indigenous consistently poor health are discussed, success stories are shared in which e.g. culture is described as a societal anxiety buffer and mechanism to handle stress.
What is emphasized throughout the sessions is the clear message that health is key to indigenous survival. Mainstream health services do not recognize the impacts of colonization and ongoing racism on indigenous health. Nor do they provide culturally appropriate care. A Canadian health worker comments: “What is urgently needed are much more indigenous doctors- not doctors who happen to be indigenous.”

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August 25, 2010 by Mirjam Hirch.

Amazing how little some Euro Americans understand about the indigenous population and history of the country they live in. This holds true even for those who are to closely collaborate with indigenous nations to help better the health situation of local indigenous groups. They are “inbreds” a government representative working in mental health in Olympia, WA commented during a recent interview when discussing alcohol issues with the tribes. The government expert who described herself to be “a white girl”, gave a purely biomedical explanation for alcohol and mental health problems amongst the tribes. Leaving socio- cultural factors completely out of the discussion.
How come there can be such an incredible ignorance about the traumatic effects of colonization and the devastating effects colonization had and still has on indigenous health?
Educating stakeholders who work with the tribes and are responsible for managing funds is highly needed to render communication possible.

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July 18, 2010 by Mirjam Hirch.

“I hope this is a start of getting into a more intense contact,” the representative of the World Health Organization stated at the organization’s Geneva headquarters during a meeting with indigenous delegates from around the world on July 14th. ” You have to come see us, speak to us,” he admonished. “It is a two way road…. You are the best to judge what works in your communities…. We need case studies…. To be honest we have done much too little, the more we can hammer away the better.”

Clearly, as these comments emphasize an indigenous health in human rights initiative is highly needed. Health needs to be discussed as an important agenda item at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
There should be an Indigenous World Health Report put together to link work at the WHO with indigenous work and bring about change. Developping policies that are institutionally embedded are absolutely vital.

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July 13, 2010 by Mirjam Hirch.

There is lots of power in indigenous knowledge holders coming together at international venues such as the conference on health promotion IUHPE currently taking place at Geneva. While in 2004 indigenous representatives still were not truly taking part in this important event, nowadays, after lots of indigenous lobbying there are many indigenous oral presentation sessions, guided poster tours as well as a daily symposium in which people share their stories about health promotion activities that are greatly successful in indigenous communities and which are based on culturally appropriate approaches and interventions.

`There have been far too many of our people dying far too young,` Bernadette, an Aboriginal woman from the Northern Territories simply explains her motivation to dedicate her life to safe lives. Alexandra from Canada reflects: `My motivation going into medicine was I`ve seen all the deficits. I was drawn into it because of all the health inequalities.`

The lack of appropriate assessment tools for indigenous peoples is recognized. Carol a First nations healer promptly shares her experiences with native drug and alcohol abuse programs in Canada: `We do not assess by deficits, but by cultural strength.` Cultural identity has a big part in the assessments and healing in these programs.

In line with this Morgan from New South Wales maintains about evaluation: `We have to get accepted all forms of evidence, not just the western model. Evaluation can be a narrative or a story.` `However it is a matter of have the will to do the funding,` another indigenous delegate adds.
`We have to discuss colonization, not only passed but present Alexandra summarizes the day`s symposium in her concluding remarks.

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July 11, 2010 by Mirjam Hirch.

The world is in the midst of a multiplicity of crisis, above all a `crisis of ideas.` We need a paradigmatic shift, an overall economic change, Dr. Sara Cook, Director, UN Research Institute for Social Development strongly emphasized in today`s opening keynote address at the 20th triennial World Conference of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE).

There are more than 1000 delegates from around the world sharing ideas and discussing important issues about health and life quality for the next four days in Geneva, ‘the capital of health.’ Contrary to the dominant neoliberal market model and its focus on economic growth voices that call for an alternative development agenda can be heared. A model that integrates social factors and is based on concepts such as equity and environmental sustainability.

Paul Hunt (UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health 2002-2008) in his keynote address analyses the pressing questions in global health from the legal perspective. Mr Hunt reminds the audience that the right to health in many countries still is the best kept secret even though it is legally binding as part of international law. One of the core obligations of governments is to achieve the highest attainable standard of health for all people. However there are `deep pockets of poverty in seas of plenty.` These are the disadvantaged individuals or e.g. indigenous groups in all regions of the world. Issues of neglected diseases mainly affecting these neglected people, Mr Hunt stresses, demand an integrative health system that involves the communities and focuses on a vertical approach. The human right to health has to be used as a tool to hold governments and other (inter)national actors as well as the private sector accountable. It is not an ethical imperative it is about human rights concerning all of us committed to social justice.

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May 29, 2010 by Mirjam Hirch.

“When our generation is gone, none of this is known anymore,” said Prof. Maria Mies during a talk in Cologne yesterday in front of an audience (the mentees, organizer and friends of the university’s Cornelia Harte Mentoring program) which was impressed by Ms Mies life’s experience and knowledgeable insights.
“There are words in our local dialect e.g. about work processes which cannot be found in High German.” Rivers and creeks in Ms Mies home region and local language have female names. Some of those words are the only remnants of a village lifestyle that ceased to exist…

Born in 1931 in pre-war Germany and raised in a self-sufficient community in the volcanic Eifel which forms part of the Rhenish Slate Mountains, Maria Mies is witness of another time period. Work and life were defined very differently back in her childhood. A whole village would help threshing. Women used to sing during work. Folk ballads were sung such as “Warum weinst Du holde Gärtnersfrau?” (melody) which later on, characterized as trash, disappeared from local consciousness.
There was quite a bit of work for the children too. It was not only playing with toys, which nowadays parents tend to buy to keep their children occupied. Life was not easy, or as the locals say: “ Det wos net liech e Mensch zu sej.” Still there was enough for everyone. No one went hungry, not even during the Second World War.

Despite the absence of television and radio at that time Maria Mies states that people were better informed, also politically. Knowledge was shared through storytelling. Those stories made people aware of history which profoundly influenced her story, Ms Mies reflects, because it was through stories she listened to that she realized that everybody’s present day reality is not the only one thinkable, that there are other worlds out there. Stories also reminded her that it does not have to be as is, that things can change or be made to change. We define the situation ourselves- That is me, this is what I do.
Led by these driving thoughts new ideas develop, that may challenge the status quo and thus consciousness raising can happen. Also in groups, Maria Mies comments, for there lies great power within people coming together in groups, networking, talking about issues and sharing experiences in an open atmosphere and a safe place. On her experiences in the feminist movement she adds that an important realization during group discussions oftentimes is that “my problem is not only my problem but one that affects all of society.”
Her revolutionary reflections and actions had Maria Mies develop new methodologies which try to bring together theory and practice. Collective approaches that focus on self-empowerment instead of creating dependencies she witnessed have proven to be successful especially within the feminist movement, e.g. the Frauen helfen Frauen, associations of autonomous women`s shelters.

Hearing Maria Mies talk about her former village home and our contemporary world in which for most profit and the city seem the destination of all dreams, one senses a strong message of peace, communicated in a charismatically honest way and sprinkled with a sense of humor.
There are a lot of problems in this world which we need to tackle. Maria Mies, the courageous transformer, elder, teacher and storyteller relating her stories impacts and inspires people’s lives making us aware that we all can try to effect change. It is a great honor to be enabled to listen deeply.

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April 10, 2010 by Mirjam Hirch.

A “new” species was confirmed by biologists. Known and eaten by the indigenous nations of the Phillippines, Aeta and Ilongot, for a long time. The animal recently in the spotlight of scientific attention (Biology Letters a journal of the Royal Society) is one of only three frugivorous monitor lizards in the world, closely related to the Komodo dragon of Indonesia, living in the northeastern coast of the island of Luzon, Philippines. Indigenous groups call the two meter long species “bitatawa” which became the basis for the lizard`s modern scientific name, varanus bitatawa.
Apart from providing insight into important aspects of biogeography this “discovery” underlines that the Philippines clearly are a hotspot of biodiversity.

When do we start to see the world through local peoples’ eyes and learn to behold all the diversity and wealth the world has to offer? Only when we fully realize this will we try to protect the beauty that surrounds us by all means.

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January 2, 2010 by Mirjam Hirch.

What a flat-out anti-war message. The science fiction epic film “Avatar” is a fictional story about the most pressing, real problems of today’s imperialistic world. It concerns big contemporary topics such as the human fight for natural resources, loss of culture and biodiversity, greed and inhumanity. The film is set on Pandora, a distant moon where an indigenous culture and their ecosystem is threatened to be destroyed by humans engaged in mining reserves of precious mineral.

Through special glasses the moviegoers are made to see a different vision that appears only too real in 3D format and acts on people emotionally. It is not a deep film by any means but draws in people from all backgrounds. The plot might not appear too appealing to many but they go to the movies interested in witnessing the technical breakthrough the movie is impressive for. United in a theater moviegoers open their hearts to the story of the love of life and future of civilization without previously expecting it. The third dimension sucks the viewer in the scene giving the action an unknown multi-dimensional experience of screen reality.

In times of political insecurity the film inspires hope and appeals to everybody’s responsibility to protect our own world. Makes people conscious and instills the moral right and duty to not just execute orders but to reflect individual deeds and the consequences these might have. It suggests, if necessary, to better switch sides. It thus is outrightly provocative as it promotes the idea of deserting and even fighting the own military to achieve true peace.

It makes me wonder how this strong anti-war message of the film might act upon the consciousness and psyche of soldiers stationed on some of the military bases around the world. A former Canadian soldier comes to my mind. When he related the story he was still suffering from the traumatic images burnt in his mind of a very old and helpless woman in Serbia during the latest war there. The woman must have fled a combat zone, alone, way out somewhere, completely exhausted, terrorized on her way to death if left unaided. He watched back as they drove on- but left her there- rules forbade…. Later he got severely hit in a tank and decided to leave the army and go to college, likely haunted by those images for the rest of his life.

Apart from the contemporary topics shown in the film, Avatar in Europe could become the Karl May of the present day. It is the idealizing story about a white guy going native. Drawn to the alien culture the protagonist was initially fighting against he assimilates and becomes the savior and strongest leader of the people he once helped to oppress. Images as portrayed in the movie certainly are a stereotypical representation of traditional cultures and make indigenous groups stay stuck with the romanticized version of the outsiders, Hollywood inspired perception of Natives. Dreaming of and escaping to a better place non-indigenous people want to see savage wild women and men of nature dancing around fires. Playing on the human wish of transcendental mythical experience the film is rather insulting in its romanticized kitsch.
At the end the alienated protagonist divorcing himself from his own cultural roots becomes the savior of the other culture.

Hopefully the movie will make people more interested to become aware of the fundamental experience of being an oppressed racial group and not fantasize about becoming other races. Fleeing our own culture is no solution. To join the call to wake people up and raise awareness of humanity’s destructive impulses and stop this destruction is.
Leaving the theater moviegoers should take off their glasses and see what is really going on: the destruction and elimination of indigenous cultures in this world, here and now. They ought to go back in their own cultures, search their roots and effect change in their worlds to help truly save our most precious planet.
Instead of escaping to another world, let’s see and try to create paradises around us.

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December 5, 2009 by Mirjam Hirch.

Strong fighters for social and climate justice travelled through Frankfurt today on a caravan that is driving from Geneva to Copenhagen, December 3-9. Politically aware people from around the world are aiming at mobilizing others to help in the struggle against the negative effects of “(green) capitalism” as well as the annihilation of indigenous peoples through globalization, promoting public awareness of contemporary, hot world discussions.

Time is running out. “When will they begin to realize that we need to fish?” asked Oper a fisherman from the Philippines fighting against development and relocation projects by his government. These projects endeavor to get at the coveted land from farmers and fishermen on the basis of lease agreements for economic development.
Oper explains the climate discussion has to focus mainly on the people affected not technical environmental solutions only. “The Philippines should not get loans from the World Bank to turn the coastal areas which were damaged by private companies into protected zones in which we are not allowed to fish anymore.” Instead of receiving loans billions if not trillions of reparation payments should be made for the destruction of the marine environment, over-fishing, and an increasing number of fish ponds for the construction of which a large proportion of the mangrove forests was cleared, seriously damaging the coastal ecological system.
To raise awareness to their cause the delegation from the Philippines brings with them a traditional banca, or dugout canoe, the favored local form of transport, capable of transporting large loads of produce.

No doubt there is a lot the travelers have in their bags to show and tell the world. Hopefully they get the highly needed exposure and are seen and heard at Copenhagen.

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December 4, 2009 by Mirjam Hirch.

Suffering, in real danger of being wiped out from a hepatitis B infection is the indigenous nation of the Candoshi, estimated at 2,500, in Peru’s northern Amazon jungle.
After Candoshi chief Venancio Ucama Simon’s dramatical call on the government, Health Minister Oscar Ugarte declared a health emergency in the area to tackle the hepatitis B epidemic that broke out in the 1990s, when an oil company, Occidental Petroleum Corporation was granted exploration rights in the jungle region. The epidemic has gone unchecked ever since with 2000 Candoshi said to be infected by now.
Decades of (medical) inattention by Peru’s health authorities are furthermore threatening the Shapra, Awajun, Achuar and Huambisa who live in remote Datem del Maranon province, in Peru’s north where they are praised for their conservationist cultures. There have been lots of deaths already. Reports also stated that AH1N1 infuenza is present in the region.

When health minister Ugarte said the hepatitis B treatment to be very expensive an indigenous representative at a Press conference in Lima this week asked whether due to the high cost of treatment, “they’re going to let our people die out?”

Resources to the health network urgently have to be provided to also protect the population of other diseases, such as rabies and leprosy. If nothing is done to help the people the land might soon be empty for economic development.

Sure everybody knows human lives do not go on forever. However why do we, as parents and grandparents live as if there were no next generation? How can we (make) believe there is not enough money? Money to simply safe life. Life which is invaluable and contains a world of incredibly powerful knowledge?

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