March 12, 2008 by Mirjam Hirch.

Alternative approaches to healing obesity and diabetes are gaining more and more interest and understanding in Europe. The principle of enacting self determination to regain control over one’s health is emphasized within the western medical system to achieve a better state of well being.
Recently one of the biggest studies ever conducted in the USA, involving 10,000 diabetics, planned for more than 10 years was discontinued after only four years. There were more deaths among the patients whose blood glucose was lowered than among the control group. Studies found that lowering the blood sugar with the help of insulin pushes the blood glucose into the adipose tissue and the muscles. The sugar transport to the brain in contrast is slowed down. The undernourished and for its high energy needs “selfish brain” starts demanding more supplies. The stress system gets activated: The heart starts pounding faster to transport more blood sugar to the brain. Heightening the risk of heart attack. Due to the lack of available energy from the body the brain commands to eat more. The patient gains weight. Diabetes gets worse. Eating becomes a strategy and turns into the sole reaction to stress and conflicts.

Based on this scientific research the method of “train the brain” is being developped at the University of Lübeck, Germany. In contrast to conventional ideas this method recognizes obesity and type 2 diabetes as central diseases of the brain on the basis of neuroendocrine defects. Changing behaviour is the focus of the “train the brain” therapy. Not only eating habits. Emotions are of prior importance. Anger, sadness, solitude all tell the person about his/her personal needs. However many patients are no longer aware of the causes of their emotions. They simply feel stressed and start to eat in order to feel better. The scientific researchers of the selfish brain project maintain that to overcome these habits and heighten the patients’ awareness for their own needs should be an important part of treatment, besides medication. 

People need to be supported to efficiently cope with the stress underlying and contributing to metabolic dysfunctions to have sufficient strenght to undertake self-care and properly oversee the diseases which are so devastating the world over and severely threaten the survival of indigenous communities.

Technorati Tags: healing, diabetes, obesity, self-determined health, science, western medicine

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February 7, 2008 by Mirjam Hirch.

Shocking figures. There are over one billion people who are dangerously obese in the world. At the same time there are people who simply do not have anything to eat. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 850 million people worldwide are undernourished which is about every seventh person, mainly children. Every second four people are dying because of hunger.

In the civilized world food resources are most plentiful. However, more and more people are seen starving there too. Only a few of them exit this world because of a real lack of physical nourishment. Spiritual poverty is rife and causing extremely serious problems: It kills. Invisible bullets, machetes, arrows and sticks, like epidemics, attack people in the form of words and deeds. Injuring so much more deeply when the perpetrators are denying family who try to control their beloved kids with iron fists in silk gloves. Taking away the individual’s autonomy and self-determination and thus, in the end, their lives.

A former schoolfriend recently died from anorexia nervosa. She simply starved to death in her parental home surrounded by wealth and material security. Her mind having been imprisoned in its own concentration camp for many years, finally, was too debilitated to open the unlocked door into freedom….
She could not win her deathly fight to control the little she felt able to control of her life - her body. Leaving her surroundings to cope with the tragedy witnessed- needing to heal.

Technorati Tags: wealth, poverty, health

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October 22, 2007 by Jay Taber.

The primary mission of institutions charged with protecting the public health is to contain outbreaks and to prevent epidemics associated with infectious disease. The first order of business in the public health regime is to isolate and study the various pathogens that pose such a threat to society, in order to determine the most effective means of prevention and containment. Through research, essential characteristics of the disease can be determined. Through analysis, options for intervention are continually reviewed, tested, and revised with an eye toward the development of prophylactic measures, treatment, and medicines, as part of the array of intervention methods at the disposal of public health professionals. In addition to the biological and infrastructural investigations conducted, committees, divisions, and departments are established for the purpose of interdepartmental communication and coordination engaged in developing appropriate legislation, budgets, and operational manuals for all the ancillary public agencies necessarily involved in implementing the mission of public health administration.

In the body politic, social pathogens of aggression that surface in the form of such things as racism, fascism, homophobia, and xenophobia can be viewed and approached in a similar manner. Each of these ideological cancers have origins, histories, distinct characteristics, and can be studied, monitored, and analyzed asking the same basic questions used by the Centers for Disease Control and the Institutes for Public Health:

• Where does it come from?
• What conditions allow it to prosper?
• How is it transmitted?
• What is its life cycle?
• What causes it to become dormant?
• Can it be eradicated?

Through such a methodical approach to understanding social pathogens, we are best able to mobilize with economy and effectiveness the resources available. Beginning our quest for human dignity with an attitude of respect for the process and results of research and analysis enables us to avoid inappropriate responses to outbreaks while we advance our pooled knowledge and experience.

(Read more about the Public Health Model.)

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October 17, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

Dr. Leslie Korn of the Center for Traditional Medicine (an agency of the Center for World Indigenous Studies) began a three-year study of Community Trauma in a western Mexico comunidad in 1996. This ground-breaking study concluded that there are serious chronic health conditions (diabetes, heart disease, obesity, mental health problems, alcoholism, drug addictions and drug abuse, etc.) that arise from persistent and sustained violence resulting from pressures of development in Fourth World nations. Community members under persistent development-trauma exhibit greater tendencies toward family violence, sexual violence and group violence themselves. Dr. Korn described a remedy to community trauma through the restoration of cultural norms while significantly slowing and even stopping development to permit cultural institutions to regain the capacity to slowly absorb or reject introduced change. When a community regains its ability to choose its social, economic, political and cultural present and future, the levels of disease and the internalized violence subsides. Violence, in other words, breeds disease and violence.

Professor Daya Somasunderam, a Sri Lankan psychiatrist conducted on a study on the mental health of Tamils (Collective trauma in northern Sri Lanka: a qualitative psychosocial-ecological Study) in Jaffna city inside Tamil Eelam claimed territory releasing his conclusions today. Somasunderam’s conclusions from studying the affects of a persistent and sustained war on Tamil communities is virtually the same as Dr. Korn’s findings in Mexico.

Repeated threats to life and personal security acted out and reenacted by Sri Lankan military occupying Tamil territories over a period of more than 20 years create collective trauma or as Dr. Korn’s terms it: community trauma.

The pattern of militant action, cease fire and renewed violence instills in individuals and the community as a whole heightened vigilance that is never at rest. The Korn Community Trauma Study in Mexico compared physiological quantitative data with psyco-social qualitative documentation to explain the physical exhaustion experienced by traumatized community members. Normal responses to stressful circumstances cause an increase in cortisol levels (the hormone that regulates natural fight-or-flight responses) and cause other hormones to excrete. These hormones natural restore when the cause of the stress are removed. Persistent vigilance with the expectation of additional threats causes these hormones to become exhausted–leaving the victim without natural capabilities to react to new stresses. Trauma results in the form of hyper vigilance, psychological and a physiological damage and hyper-reactivity. When a whole community no-longer has the capacity to rest and restore normal behaviors and normal life it becomes traumatized, suffers a strong sense of powerlessness and consequently becomes a threat to its own safety and becomes a threat to others.
Tamil Eelam

The Tamil Eelam seeks to exercise the power of self-determination and to become self-governing. Sri Lanka sees this aspiration as a threat to the continuity of the Sri Lankan state. The Tamil possess a bedrock culture that extends into the mist of history by 5000 years and more. Tamil culture defines the harmonious relations between community members, families and relations with outsiders. The spiritual life, economy, social life and political life of Tamil communities have been profoundly important to the continuity of this ancient civilization. Violent disruptions of this culture by military intervention from Sri Lanka for what ever reason contributes to the traumatization of the Tamil population as well as the Sri Lankan populations.

Community Trauma is pervasive in Tamil Eelam, in the development pressurized indigenous communities of western Mexico, in Palestine, the war-torn tribal communities of Iraq, and in the native communities of Canada and the United States living under persistent threats of relocation, assimilation and development. These communities are injured both physically and psychologically. No amount of conventional medicine will heal the deep wounds introduced by generations of violence in these communities. Only the restoration of cultural norms and traditional healing can do.

The Sri Lankan violence on the Tamil must come to an end. Both sides must know that twenty-years and more have demonstrated that violence cannot resolve the differences. Unless culture is permitted to heal the deep wounds neither the nation of Tamil Eelam nor the Sri Lankan state will achieve healthy and prosperous societies. Tamil Eelam must be permitted to exercise self-determination. The Sri Lankan state must know that could mean that Tamil will want to be a separate people. It is equally possible that Sri Lanka and Tamil Eelam could form a kind of condominial state where Tamil Eelam will freely govern itself. Tamil community trauma must be healed or it will return in the future to strike out against others in terrifying forms.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

(Dr. Ryser is the author of Fourth World Geopolitics and the forth-coming book Nationcraft, and actively participated in the twelve-year effort to draft the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.)

Technorati Tags: community trauma, Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka, culture

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October 10, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

Who does not want to be in the best of health? And who can say of himself to enjoy health, life, the world to the fullest or knows many people who are completely healthy, physically and mentally?
Health is a universal human aspiration and a basic human need. So much more do we become aware of this fact when we feel to have lost our health or parts of it. We wait or actively look out for being whole again. This search for regaining lost health can become the main driving force behind everything we do and even believe in.
A simple fact is, the less healthy we are in terms of demoralisation, debts and fear, the more prone we get to manipulation.

In pre World War Two Germany the german nation, which was originally forged out of many small regional nations that formed the culturally colourful carpet of Central Europe, suffered from ill-health. Unemployment, poverty and social instability was unbearably high. At that point someone entered the scene, called Adolf Hitler who was elected president . He appeared a godlike figure, promising wholeness and well-being. A very simply rule to make this assumption understood by everyone was introduced. People were taught when greeting each other to say “Heil Hitler” instead of hello and good bye. Upon rare refusals to comply to that new rule people even got excluded from social groups. The meaning of “heil” in the german language is whole and hale. Saying this word so many times repeatedly every day to one another- the suggestive power of those words must have played the trick. Germans started hoping and believing Hitler could heal, and everybody become whole again. In reality, however, Hitler brought mostly doom and destruction to the people all around. Killing many, crippling the generations to come.
Why did only so very few Germans notice the discrepancy between words and deeds at the time? How could it take so long for everyone to become more active and critical to obtain true information and realize that their leader figure was the exact opposite from what he wanted to appear to be?

Whatever the answers to these and like questions might be, what this incident in German history should remind us of is the necessity of individual and critical thinking concerning words and contemporary expressions. What about the common saying: “development/ progress is inevitable”? This expression is used nowadys the world over. Indigenous peoples are told to think and say this sentence when e.g. helping to build new roads through their territories.

Progress is “a going on, action of walking forward,” from Latin. progressus meaning the “advancement to higher stages”.
Development in its holistic sense is the development of society, rich or poor, which can be judged by the quality of its population’s health. Development solely seen as economic development, is defined in Wikipedia as the “development of economic wealth of countries or regions for the well-being of their inhabitants…. It typically refers to improvements in a variety of indicators, such as literacy rates and life expectancy, and it implies a reduction in poverty”.

Now when we look at the meaning of the words progress and development and the facts and effects of development, e.g. the crisis in indigenous peoples’ health we could ask ourselves: Is it true that economic development is for the well-being of the people? What about people who made the experience that development brings only disease and death? That progress can kill when tribal peoples are seperated from their lands, breaking down physically and mentally?
Isn’t it high time to see clearly and listen closely to more critical voices?

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October 8, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

The Micmac of what is now Newfoundland, Canada were probably the first of the many peoples of the western hemisphere to see the boats from Skania (at the southern tip of what is now Sweden) arrive near their shores about one thousand years before the present. The Skanians continued to show up on the Micmac shores for decades and then they were gone.  The northern Atlantic currents allowed for occasional visits by the peoples who would be viking and fishing in what eventually would be known as Iceland, and then Greenland and in the “new found land” of the far west. These were the descendants of the early travelers from northern Europe who only sporadically visited and settled for short times.

For the nations of the western hemisphere, the first visits from the “norse lands” proved to be disastrous.  While there was little actual intercourse between the visiting fishers and the people on the land, the “germs of Europe” had landed. Unbeknown to either the Micmac or the Skanians, deadly diseases that would eventually consume a hemisphere had been  left in the communities to spread along trade routes to the south and to the interior.

The cod fishing fleets of what would become Norway, France, Portugal and England traveled the month-long sail across the sea to take millions of fish from the rich shores of Newfoundland and the “banks” to the south as far as the Wampanoag and Narragansett of what would become Massachusetts. Such fishing was intense for its time for more than five hundred years until the early 1600s when colonization of North America’s Atlantic coast began in earnest. Driven by a produce “more valuable than gold” for the wealth earned in Europe, the cod fishery drove the expansion of northern Europe and eventually stimulated boat building by the Basque of Iberic Peninsula (eventually to be known as Spain).

The Basque were superb boat builders and seafarers (and remain so today). They were whalers and fishermen of long experience–possessing great knowledge about the ocean to the west. New ships worthy of long hauls across the Atlantic Ocean were built and became in the 1400s the foundation for what would become the means for the Genoan, Don Cristóval Colon (Christopher Columbus in the United States) to travel from Spain to the land of the Taino Nation in the western hemisphere. Basque knowledge combined with Skanian, English, Breton, and Irish knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean developed over five hundred years proved to be essential to Don Colon and his proposal to the new Queen and King of Spain in 1491 for a journey to brasil and the spice islands.

Before Don Colon set foot in Taino territory in 1492, the diseases that would eventually kill millions of people throughout the western hemisphere had already been planted and replanted in what would become known as New England. When Don Colon stood on the shores of the Taino nation it is fairly clear he had no idea that bacteria and viruses carried by his predecessors and now his own shipmates would deal a death blow to so many peoples in the vibrant and hugely populated western hemisphere (some estimates suggest a collective hemispheric population of 90,000,000 to 110,000,000). The western hemisphere was populated by hundreds of large cities (some with populations of 500,000 and more) dwarfed Europe’s cities and, indeed, the European populations.  Nations from the tip of what is now called South America to the far north of what is called North America now engaged in trade and migrations north and south.

The Huadenosaunee and Wampanoag confederations had been seriously damaged by introduced diseases in the years before initial settlements from England. The Taino were also damaged by introduced diseases from Don Colon’s visits.  The most striking fact is that these diseases traveled like wild fire from one nation to the other by way of the trade routes long established and functioning in the western hemisphere.

Disease was the first product of globalization beginning a little more than one thousand years before the present. After disease came rape, slavery and finally wars to the nations of the western hemisphere. Lief Erikson is one name attached to the first European visits and Cabot and Don Colon. The search for fish wealth, spices and gold wealth introduced deadly diseases like influenza, chicken pox, measles, and malaria in to the lands of the Micmac, Taino, the Maya, the Inkas, and eventually the Apache, Shoshone, Dakota and then the Cowlitz, Skagit, and the Squamish of the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

Whole communities would die in a matter of days after the deadly infections were introduced by carriers who traded between nations carrying their goods on their backs, in canoes, on dog pulling travoi, and on Llamas. Before the Europeans even arrived in most places in the hemisphere, death by disease had already arrived.

After sustaining enormous losses (sometimes half of a population and other times as much as 90% of a population would die) whole nations were sometimes left to wander–leaving their cities and dropping their cultivation of maize, potatoes, tomatoes, manioc, squash, beans, chilis and thousands of other plant and animal products that provided sustenance to millions. When the Europeans began to come in greater numbers and settle in the western hemisphere, they were in many instances faced with nations only beginning to recover from former losses. And then with new settlers came new diseases.  The effects of disease globalization continued for generation after generation.

The first round of globalization beginning so long ago was followed by another phase in the 1500s. That produced more disease. And now a new phase of globalization has struck that covets the lands and resources of the Fourth World in a way never before experienced. What diseases will come of this new pariah?

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: skania, columbus, globalization, disease

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October 1, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

Modern Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World could run the disingenuous title of a new novel. Presented as a simple traveller’s narrative into nanocountry.The facts related would not be on trivial issues but concern mind-boggling questions, such as: Why should you break an egg to make an omelette?

Genetics, robotics and nanotechnology are the technologies of the 21 century. The pirates of the modern scientific age are not keen on “discovering” foreign countries, robbing food and capturing people. They are pushing new frontiers in unknown territory, the capital of which is knowledge. Genes the more material treasure. First discovered the genetic material then gets patented. Ensuing adventures in laboratories lead the modern conquistadors into invisible, very small scale territories. There they manipulate matter on atomar level to hold the key to health and happiness, find the best genes to achieve longevity of the body and eventually create their own fictional island nations. More like a biutopia maybe.

Main target areas of biotechnology industry and genetics research are indigenous territories. Indigenous traditional knowledge promises immense commercial benefit from nature. Moreover much of life’s genetic diversity exists among indigenous peoples and in indigenous territories, which are havens for biodiversity- so called mega diversity zones.
On indigenous territories researchers will find the genetic diversity, human, animal and plant, necessary for their research projects. Apart from potentially possessing rare genes, above-average suffering from „important“ diseases or medical condition makes indigenous people prime candidates as subjects of scientific curiosity in some research projects.

Researchers running these projects discuss the unique questions raised concerning those genetic research projects amongst themselves. Indigenous peoples are rarely at the table to represent own views.

Repeatedly, without indigenous peoples’ knowledge or consent, corporations have engaged in genetic theft. These biopirates were claiming research and patent rights over genetic material of plants, animals as well as medicinal and agricultural knowledge.

In order to prevent any further damage and injustice from the extraction of genetic resources from indigenous territories or indigenous peoples, first and foremost, special laws need to be created. For the time being, indigenous peoples have to assert their own sovereign power to protect their own resources and lives against corporate commodification.

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September 11, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

There has been intense public health debate in many parts of the world. The focus is to determine the most appropriate official policy towards traditional medicines. Some countries have policies that discourage traditional medicines, while others have supportive policies. The majority of countries do not have official policies and have simply left traditional medicines to individuals to decide (as of the year 2000, 25 countries reported having a national traditional medicine policy).
The important role being played by traditional medicine in the provision of primary healthcare is recognised around the world. There is now a growing consensus that the best policy is to protect and help develop the potential of traditional medicine as a source of health care. Safety, efficacy, quality and, above all, access to and cultural education of traditional medicine practices have to be guaranteed. Traditional Health Care Policies provide a sound basis for defining the role that traditional medicine plays in national health care delivery systems. Therefore increased government support and recognition of traditional medicine through official policies are urgently needed world-wide. The priority to be accorded to implementing traditional medicine policies differs between countries. It depends on the burden of ill health in the country and the relative importance and integration of traditional practitioners in the health care delivery system. There is no doubt, however, that national policies help all countries to develop strategies to protect their indigenous traditional medicine knowledge through increased recording and preservation and the re-training of traditional medicine practitioners on e.g. basic principles of reproductive health care. This is important for all of humankind.
For indigenous peoples the existence of traditional medicine policies is crucial. To be able to use and control their own, culturally defined, traditional health system is the most fundamental right of self-determination of Fourth World peoples.

Technorati Tags: Traditional Medicine, Indigenous Peoples, Policy, Health

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August 31, 2007 by Jay Taber.

In this 2003 report by CWIS associate scholar Anke Weisheit, traditional medicine in contemporary Uganda is examined as, “a complex combination of activities, order of knowledge, beliefs, and customs.”

In this article announcing an award for developing herbal medicine and preserving traditional knowledge, Anke observes that these locally produced remedies are “serious science.”

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August 30, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

In Ghana there are few orthodox medical practitioners and many traditional healers. By some estimates for every orthodox medical partitioner there are 200,000 people and for every traditional healer there are 200 people. Ghana’s first President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah strongly supported and facilitated government policy for the dominant role of traditional healers in Ghanaian society. Traditional healers consequently flourish and the population has benefited.

HIV and AIDS have decimated many African communities and the scourge continues to expand. Former US President William Clinton’s foundation, William Gates’ foundation and the United States government have pumped money into Africa to reduce the cost of drugs so that more people might benefit from medicines that have extended life. The problem is that to get medicines to people the orthodox medical practitioners need to have access to the people and except in mostly metropolitan areas they do not. Traditional healers are those who have greatest access to the larger parts of African populations.

Here is the problem: most orthodox medical practitioners don’t trust traditional healers and visa versa. Unless they work together, reaching the vast numbers throughout sub-Saharan Africa in particular will be very unlikely. No matter how much money comes to Africa to treat HIV and AIDS those numbers will not be reached. Traditional healers have access to the population, but they are not included in the strategy to meet the treatment and prevention needs of the population. In the case of HIV and AIDS prevention is the most important medicine. Cooperation between orthodox medical practitioners and traditional healers is therefore essential if HIV and AIDS are to be defeated.

Africa First. LLC in Minnesota is headed by William Donquah originally from Ghana. He is spearheading an effort to bring orthodox medical practitioners and traditional healers together to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS. The Center for World Indigenous Studies joined Dr. Donquah, UN AIDS and the Ghanaian Government in this monumental struggle by cohosting an international Conference on HIV and AIDS, Traditional Medicine and Traditional Knowledge in Accra, Ghana in March of 2005. The result of that conference was a Declaration that urged collaboration between orthodox medical practitioners and traditional healers. The Declaration was carried to the United Nations and sent out across the world.

Recognizing the key importance of collaboration, the Conference indicated that this approach could prevent more HIV and AIDS as a result of a simple agreement between orthodox medical practitioners and traditional healers.

This, as it turned out, is not so easy a proposition to accomplish. The hostility by orthodox medical practitioners toward traditional healers is a major obstacle.

The Center for World Indigenous Studies has agreed to collaborate for a second international conference in March 2008. By this means organizers hope to create a more acceptable climate for cooperation to firmly prevent the horrific spread of HIV and AIDS. Perhaps now we can further encourage a simple agreement to work together to respond to Africa and to others in the world where HIV and AIDS have such a dramatic affect on peoples’ lives. Traditional healers are a key element that must become a part of the global strategy. They have the trust and confidence of the vast numbers of peoples in the world. Traditional healers must become a full partner in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

(C) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: HIV, AIDS, traditional healers, Africa First, Ghana

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