orality and indigenous me

8/3/2019 Orality and Indigenous Me

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Orality and Indigenous Medicine of the Americas: An Epistemology of EcologicalAwareness

http://www.tlahui.com/medic/medic25/oralidad_francis.htm

Diplomado de Tlahui-EducaHerbolaria, Temazcal, y Medicina Tradicional MexicanaDiplomate 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 canhave a significant influence on all aspects of the "mentality" of a culture. (Ong, 1982) Inthis paper I will focus on how orality influences the epistemologies (i.e. basis andmethods of knowledge) of Indigenous peoples of the Americas and explore theconnections between Indigenous American medicine and Indigenous Americanecological thought, discussing the ways in which the intersubjective and holisticecocentric perspective of Indigenous medicine can help to heal our entire planet. In thispaper I will often use the phrase "Indigenous oral" (Abram, 1996) in my discussion inorder to emphasize the connection between Indigenous cultures of the Americas and theinfluence of orality on traditional indigenous medicine which constitutes the focus of mypaper. Although orality is certainly not the only influence on medical thought and therelationship 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 aneglected area of research in the study of traditional Indigenous medicine. The study oforality-literacy differences is also important because in our contemporary literate culturewe are so immersed in literacy that it is difficult for us to understand or even imaginehow people from oral cultures think. This paper will be written from an interdisciplinaryperspective, bringing contributions from literacy studies, linguistics and philosophy tothis discussion of this topic.

Some theorists in the field of orality/literacy studies have pointed out the politicallyempowering characteristics of the acquisition of literacy. The purpose of my paper is notto 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 anepistemology of Nature and ecological awareness-something which I believe is crucial intoday's world. For a similar reason, the medical effects of traditional Indigenous therapieson individual patients will also not be discussed in my paper since that would treat adifferent topic. Nor do I intend to imply that Indigenous medicine of the Americas is theonly type of traditional medicine that is influenced by orality-indeed there are many typesof traditional medicine around the world that involve the type of thinking present in my


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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, butonly the reaffirmation of the living planet Earth itself as the basis for our awareness. Ifeel it should also be stressed that what I feel is the positive ecological consciousnesspresent in epistemologies of Indigenous Americans does not necessarily require the

conversion to a particular religion or doctrine, but only the acquisition of a particular kindawareness 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 fromcontemporary Western thought, which is under the influence of literacy. According to thescholar of orality-literacy differences Walter J. Ong (1982), orality is not a form ofwriting, and writing is not a form of orality. The two have unique and differentcharacteristics. Oral thinking is deeply rooted in the life world and in the use ofperceptual 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, nosecondhand knowledge separated from context, no feeling of separation from otherpeople, from the land, and from the nonhuman beings which share our planet. In oralcultures there is a wider dialog which people from literate cultures tend not to understandwell, or not to take seriously, a dialog that is not with purely human text, but with theentire world itself in a relationship, using language of a more-than-human world, in akind of "ecology of magic" (Abram, 1996). This type of thinking is found in all membersof Indigenous oral societies, and in varying degrees in recently alphabetized Indigenouscultures (Ong, 1982). Although criticized by some scholars as deterministic andgeneralistic, 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 theirintersubjective perceptual awareness rooted in the reality of the living natural world.

Observing, and learning from Nature was part of the ancient animist/shamanist traditionof the Americas. The processes of differentiation over time created Indigenous culturesthat 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 ofthe basic foundations of Indigenous cultures, despite their variations. IndigenousAmericans considered themselves as being as part of a larger reality that includedhumans, culture, and society together with Nature (Aparicio Mena, 2005b).

According to Ong (1982), the historical shift from orality to literacy has had an importantinfluence on the way humans perceive the world, by creating a separation of the knowerfrom the known, by removing context and the perception of the life world, and leading tomodern Western analytic thinking. Indeed, nonhuman natural forces seem to havewithdrawn both from language and from the senses in modern literate society. Accordingto David Abram (1996) with the discovery and learning of written words, literate cultureslost something that had been integral to oral traditions. With the written word, language,


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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 andmodified 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 asense of the life world might breathe was closed off and the first fully phonetic alphabetcame into being. The alphabet becomes entirely airtight and self-referential-without anyneed for interpretation and without any references to other life forms other than thehuman (Abram, 1996).

The continents of the Americas where Indigenous culture and medicine flourished wereregions of orality-even though there were complex writing systems in the Mesoamericanregion. The painted books that were used in Mesoamerica were basically oral texts,because they combined pictures with oral human speech/song and required interpretationof images, unlike reading the phonetic alphabet. These systems of orality-paintingtherefore served to maintain and support orality, unlike chirographic (writing-based)systems (Len Portilla, 2003). Much as in Chinese script, these Indigenous Americanbooks (called codices) contained rich images which directly linked to the lifeworld, withplants, animals, and people in the environment being shown (Abram, 1996). After theSpanish conquest however, many of these Mesoamerican codices were greatly changedduring the process of translation and cultural mixing so as to conform with what ngelMara Garibay (1953) termed "the luminous prison of the alphabet."

With the development of the first fully self-contained alphabetic writing system inancient 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 isfor the Indigenous oral peoples of the Americas considered to be the source of all life andmeaning-- the mysteries of the Earth itself and a more-than-human field of meaningswithin Nature. The invention of the alphabet established a direct association between thesign 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) contemporaryWestern culture derives from this meeting of human senses and alphabet in ancientGreece, and this type of thinking has infiltrated other cultures, even those such as in theAsian cultures which still continue to use a writing system that makes reference to thelifeworld.

According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty (as cited in Abram, 1996), an important figure inthe field of linguistics and phenomenology (the study of phenomena as they manifestthemselves to the experience) the direct, prereflective perception of the world isinherently synestheic (using all the senses together), and is participatory and animistic,disclosing the things and elements that surround us as expressive subjects, entities andpowers. Each thing in the world, and each phenomena in the world has the power to reach


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us and to influence us, therefore, according to this view every phenomena in Nature isexpressive. We all have the capacity to communicate with nature, and for nature tocommunicate 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 citedin Abram, 1996), just as there is an optic chasm, there is a "chasm" between all the sensemodalities where they continually couple and collaborate with one another. The act ofreading an alphabetic text involves "hearing" what the writer wishes to convey to us byusing our eyes. An interplay of different senses is also what enables the chasm ofcommunication between the body and the surrounding world. Synestheic perception isthe rule among all life on Earth, however literate people are largely unaware of it onlybecause 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 cycledupon itself without the presence of surrounding Nature.

There has been a historical progression from oral, perceptually saturated culture to a morerationalistic culture which emphasizes separateness which is under the influence ofalphabetic writing. Western culture has moved away from an engaged, intimate,empathetic and participatory understanding of the world, leading to an impoverishment inawareness and perception, while among Indigenous oral peoples the primalunderstanding 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 ideaof a single, wholly determinable, objective reality. According to the phenomenologist andlinguist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (as cited in Abram, 1996), humans are all born with theability 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 thisview-"when I breath out and when I breath in the air enters me and I am not completelyseparate or autonomous with the air." The air in other words is not a passive entity but ananimic force coming to me when I summon it. In other words, as the anthropologist andphilosopher Lucien Lvy-Bruhl (as cited in Abram, 1996) states, "perception isparticipation." 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 arenot merely subjective, they are intersubjective phenomena, phenomena experienced by amultitude of sensing objects. The modern assumption of objectivity has led to an almosttotal forgetting of the lifeworld in the modern era, yet it is this lifeworld in which allhuman endeavors are rooted. This lifeworld is our immediately lived experience as we


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live it, prior to all our thoughts about it. It is present in our everyday tasks andenjoyments-it is reality before being analyzed and engaged by theories and science-andinfact, theories and science could not exist without it. Whenever we seek to explain thisworld conceptually, we seem to forget our active participation in it. Striving to representthe world, we forget its direct presence.

In the field of linguistics, the majority of linguists follow the theory of Ferdinand deSaussure (as cited in Abram, 1996), which maintained that there is an arbitrarinessbetween the vocal sounds and that which they signify, however there also exists anothertheory in linguistics that maintains that gesture, mimicry and onomatopoeia may havebeen at the origin of human language. In other words the genesis of language itself mayhave originated in preverbal communication between the human body and surroundingnonhuman Nature. We are embodied beings, and we learn language through our body,according to Merleau-Ponty (as cited in Abram, 1996). Many authentically Indigenoustribes use imitation of animal communication, ways of walking, and so on in order tobetter hunt and this type of knowledge is essential to their survival. There have beenmany cases recorded of hunters even communicating among themselves using animallanguages. Therefore, according to this theory, it is not the human body alone, but ratherthe whole world of the senses all together that provides the deep structure of language, soin a sense the animate world speaks within us. Language is not a purely mentalphenomenon but living, embodied, and constantly shaped though reciprocity andparticipation. The complex interchange we call "language" is rooted in the non-verbalexchange already going on between our "flesh" and the "flesh" of the world. Our sensesexpress and respond to the living natural world and the living natural world expressesitself and responds to our senses. Experientially considered, language is not the exclusiveproperty 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" actuallyrepresent a reservoir of holistic knowledge that conserves a view of the world that is farricher and more inclusive than our own literate culture. Oral-indigenous cultures stillmaintain a profound awareness of the importance of the creative cosmos, the knowingbody (which is a unified bodymind), and knowledge of place. The orality present in manyof these cultures can include sounds that exist within its ecosystem, allowing not onlyintra-species communication but inter-species communication (Abram, 1996).Developments in interspecies communication suggests that "language" can be consideredin 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 thisbelief 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 aunity with a philosophical tradition based on harmony, interconnection, and equilibrium


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in the lifeworld. The duality of life and death are part of this unity. Health and illness arethe result of equilibrium or disequilibrium of the elements that compose this underlyingunity of reality and/ or its functions. Plants are not seen in this tradition as vegetables andnothing 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 restoreequilibrium-which is what Indigenous cultures see as health (Aparicio Mena, 2005b).

For people from a Western educational background, the study of medicine means tofollow a Western mindset and to follow the path of science. For a traditional Indigenousperson from an oral culture in Mesoamerica however, the use of direct perception and thesenses in the lifeworld to understand Nature is a way of life. Plants, as with the rest ofNature is part of an "energy" or "ample reality", something which the writer ChicaCasarola (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. Fortraditional Indigenous oral cultures in the Mesoamerican region, health is seen as thebalance of energies and continuous adaptation and regulation of elements which composethe social environment, the natural environment, the cultural environment, and thespiritual environment, all in a relationship of interconnectedness. (Aparicio Mena,2005b).

Because of its transitory and contextual nature, in oral cultures the visible breath is thespoken word, and this impermanence makes the word more valuable and more "living" tothese peoples. Spoken words and ability to speak well are taken very seriously in oralcultures (Ong, 1982). Spoken words are seen to have powerful, magical qualities, and inthese 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 theplant itself, through dreams, visions, or the plant communicating with them directly(Buhner, 1996). Orality emphasizes intuitive and situational-based knowledge, and thereis 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 intothe 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 areconsidered 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 anyobject) through mutual perception and communication and that this requires theaccumulation of spiritual power. In Indigenous medicine there is a strong element ofbeing 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


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important in oral cultures since it serves as a mnemonic device in a culture that does nothave alphabetic script. In Mesoamerica, the use of song is often mentioned whendiscussing the Calmecac schools, and it is likely that song was widely used in many otherMesoamerican 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 toOng. The idea of songs (music) with its poetic and emotive orientation is also keepingwith 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 inIndigenous oral cultures as in all oral cultures, people do not "study" in the Westernsense, but are apprenticed. Apprenticeship in plant medicine in some Indigenous oralcultures for example, might require that the student spend long periods of time with eachplant and learn its song. To complete the training, the student would be expected to singthe song of each plant being used. This can still be seen today in a number ofcontemporary Indigenous cultures.

In a world without alphabetic books such as in Indigenous oral cultures of the Americasthere is also out of necessity a direct participation between the various keepers ofknowledge. Among people who use the encyclopedia of plant songs in some of theIndigenous cultures of the Americas for instance, there is often the recognition of thepower of another person's song and at times they might wish to obtain the song. If theowner of the song decided to sell it, an exchange would be agreed upon, and the ownerwould "teach the song, explain its use, and show a specimen of the herb to be employedwith 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 ideasand concepts contained within these languages (Aparicio Mena, 2005a). According toOng (1982), oral cultures tend to give greater emphasis to community and respect forelders compared with literate cultures because memory is fundamental to the preservationof 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 developedwithin the Western context) has appropriated expressions of Indigenous oral thought tomarket a solitary individual's ambition of personal improvement-but this is not anauthentic 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 andsurvival, with the word "community" interpreted in the widest possible sense to includesurrounding environment of their area-plants, animals, and society (Walker, 2001).

Because the senses of an oral people are contextual, still attuned to the world aroundthem, still conversant with the expressiveness of Nature, time is seen as cyclical androoted to each living being. Time in such as world is not separable from the circular life


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of the sun and the moon, from the cycling of the seasons, the death and rebirth of theanimals-from the "eternal return" of the greening Earth. In oral speech there is repetitiondue to the nature of oral memory, and because unlike alphabetic writing, orality cannotexist 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 andeach instant. Each "place-instant", a complex of location and time, determines in anirresistible 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 contrastwith 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) Promotesexteriorization of thought (4) Encourages people to see themselves situated in time withlinear categorical thinking.

Taxonomy, Rhetoric, and the Interconnection between Humans and Nature

Being from oral cultures does not mean that Indigenous peoples lack or have lackeddetailed knowledge of the natural world. Indigenous oral peoples can often observe andknow the plants of their world better than many Western botanists. They can oftenidentify and name each plant in their territory in any stage of growth, from seedling todead leaf. According to Bonfil Battalia (1989/1996) for example, Indigenous languagesare far richer than Spanish in describing different parts of the corn plant and of corn indifferent stages of life. Some systems of plant identification are more complex andprecise than those currently in use by Western botanists (Buhner, 1996).

Orality influences systems of classification - everything must be memorized, thereforesystems 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, forexample in the Aztec medical classification of the human body. Oral discourse accordingto Ong (1982) is formulaic in style and these formulas are based on clusters whichconstitute the organizing principles of the formulas. Oral thinking is non-linear. InAlfredo Lpez 's classic work The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the AncientNahuas (1980/1988) this can be evidenced in the Aztec terms that mention classes-likethe one that includes all parts of the body that are striated (acaliuhca); those that includeall tubes (acayotl, piazyotl, cocotl); the one that unites everything communicating with

outside (tlecallotl), and the one that groups all curves together (coliuhca). As for criteriafor 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 andclose an orifice (motzoliuhca), those used for throwing objects (mayahuia), those thatprotect a person (nepalehuiaya), those used in running (tlaczayatl) and those used out tocarry out man's wishes (tlatecoaca). Here similar things are grouped together in clusters


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even if they are part of different bodily systems and located in different parts of the body.

According to Claude Lvi-Strauss (1962/1966) the mind of Indigenous oral peoples, "thesavage mind" is totalizing. According to Lpez Austin (1980/1988), in any society wheremythical thought predominates, there is a tendency to equate the different taxonomic

systems and to look for corresponding elements in different processes, natural as well associal. Various ideas are compounded together, and there is an attempt to seek equivalentmeanings and parallelisms among different classification systems in an attempt todiscover the supreme congruency and total order in the universe. The goal is to reach thegreat classificatory synthesis, the maximum cognitive and norm setting instrument ofexistence. The effort to project different taxonomic systems on one another creates linksamong elements from very different areas of classification, and the semiotic complexesare enriched by relationships produced by the supreme synthesis. In this way, a givencolor, a mineral, a plants species, a cardinal direction, an animal etc. may be classified asequivalents until a general classification system is formed, containing innumerable slotsto which the corresponding elements of different taxonomic systems are distributed.

There are abundant Indigenous American examples of links between the different cosmiclevels; 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 itcame; the rising and setting of stars is equated to an identical course in man's gestation orto the germination of seeds; the names and parts of tree parts or the components of ahouse usually derive from those of the human organism, or the parts of the human bodyare matched to different levels of the universe while the divisions of animal species openinto taxonomic fans. Interestingly, in Nahuatl, the name most commonly applied to thehuman 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 themost important one for Indigenous North Americans-maize, thus forming a profoundmetaphoric link between human corporeal being and the food to which humans owe theirexistence in Indigenous societies (Lpez Austin, 1980/1988).

Humans and natural cycles are inseparably linked in Indigenous culture, and medicalthought reflects this holism. For example, according to Chevalier & Sanchez Bain (2003),a hot-cold dichotomy involving concepts of balance, cyclic movement, and heliotropicgrowth is central to the Mesoamerican concept of medicine and pervades the ways inwhich people think about their relationships to the land and the entities that surroundsthem. 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 studyIndigenous medicine if it does not include the complete study of the holistic world viewof Indigenous peoples and the dynamic connections between humans, plants, andspiritual forces as they affect illness.

According to Ong (1982), use of metaphor, similitude, and repetition (as in poetry and


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song) is an important part of everyday orality, and elevates speaking to an art form. In theNahuatl language according to Abbot (1987) metaphor and similitude and repetition areinfact one of the most fundamental features of this language. The Huehuetlatolli, or"Ancient Word" which was compiled by Bernard de Sahagn in the years immediatelyfollowing the Spanish conquest of Mexico, is considered a key text that contains

excellent samples of Indigenous oral rhetoric used in various life situations, includingmedical situations. According to Abbot (1987), Bernardo de Sahagn's work is one of themost complete accounts of the rhetoric of preliterate oral cultures. Garibay (1953)mentions that paired metaphors are typically found in the same sentence in NahuatlIndigenous rhetoric and are used to convey the same thought which is something whichhe calls "difrasismo." Aztec rhetoric is brief, aphoristic, and repetitive. According to Ong(1982) the psychodynamics of orality can be characterized as being structurally additiverather than subordinative, stylistically copious and redundant, and stylisticallyconservative. This is in keeping with the need in oral cultures to memorize knowledge inorder to conserve it by means of repetition and providing large quantities of strongimagery to what is being told, as well as making the constant repetition more palatableand more interesting by use of metaphor. This use of metaphor in oral cultures also canmean that a sense of interconnectedness or linking of ideas between many different kindsthings.

Bonfil Batalla (1989/1996) mentions that that indigenous languages in the Mesoamericanregion still continue to guard, protect, and pass on to future generations who speak theselanguages the Indigenous oral culture of ancient times with its cosmology and worldview. Every culture can be seen as a unique experiment in the human encounter with thenature of reality, an experiment conducted over extremely long lengths of time. Thereforethe 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 andcultural epistemology are closely connected. However, much as natural diversity is beingreduced and homogenized to support the goals of the global economy, so too is linguisticand 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 abelief in complete anthropocentrism and in scientific reductionism. Indigenous oralepistemology 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 asingle living being. This awareness seems to be present in all Indigenous societies.(Buhner, 2002). Indeed, Mircea Eliade in his work Shamanism and the ArchaicTechniques 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 thetraces of a single ancient shamanic ideological system stretching from Alaska to Tierradel Fuego."


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This belief in "Mother Earth" still survives in the syncretic consciousness of mostMexicans today-with the element of identification with the creative forces of Natureclearly as the Indigenous link. Furthermore it is not surprising that the IndigenousAmerican Sweat Lodge (which is returning to popularity in contemporary Mexico)

symbolically represents the womb, and at the same time, the Earth. According to theMexican writer Guillermo Marn (as cited in Aparicio Mena, 2005b), in the ancientMexican tradition, the Earth is not an object to be exploited and dominated, but rather isseen as a dearly loved mother, the mother of humanity and indeed of all life, a motherwho is close to her children. According to Alfredo Lopez-Austin, complex culturesdeveloped with powerful state ideology and systems of control in Mesoamerica, yetMesoamerica has been said to be the only major world "civilization" that remainedbasically animist in its world view (Lpez Austin, 1980/1988). According to Marin (ascited in Aparicio Mena, 2005b) in Mexico there is a feeling of deep love between humansand the Earth.

The belief in the fundamental importance of the natural world is one of IndigenousAmerica's most profound dimensions and contributions to humanity according to BonfilBatalla (1989/1996). It is impossible to understand any aspect of any IndigenousAmerican culture without understanding this. In Indigenous American culture unlikeWestern culture, the natural world is not seen as an enemy, nor is it assumed that greaterhuman self-realization is achieved through greater separation from Nature. To thecontrary, a person's condition as part of the cosmic order is recognized and the aspirationis toward permanent integration which can be achieved only through a harmoniousrelationship 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'swork 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 physiologicalsystem. 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 essentiallyphysiological. It is concerned with the working of the whole system, not with theseparated parts of a planet divided arbitrarily.

Buhner (2002) states that Western culture puts thinking above all else (Decarts "CogitoErgo 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 theuniverse lacking any intrinsic value of its own apart from human use. Rather believing inhaving animal counterparts and plant teachers in the sensing and sensitive surroundingnatural world, as in Indigenous oral thought, humans are considered completely separatefrom other creatures, and indeed people who are considered inferior have often beenconsidered "closer to the animals" or "less than human" according to the type of thinkingbased on this paradigm. Feelings and sensory perception have been removed from what is


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considered "valid discourse" about the natural world. And there is no feeling of cosmicdebt to the natural world. Humanity has adopted increasingly limiting epistemologieswhich effectively separate humans from other beings. The mechanistic denial ofrelationship and process as fundamentally constitutive to our being has delivered Westernculture to the point that only separateness, fragmentation, and human-made constructs

seem real. The adoption of philosophies based on scientific/medical reductionism, hastaken the anti-Nature paradigm even further, resulting in surrounding Nature being seenas something alien to humanity, and as a force that needs to be controlled, exploited, anddesecrated. Humans feel exempt from Nature's laws and the consequences of humanactions. The result is that humanity destroys Nature, with its phytocommunicationsystems 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 asintrinsically valid ways of knowing the world. Biofilia according to Edward Wilson (ascited 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 accumulatedinformation. It is an ecocentric way of understanding the world which empathicallyunderstands the interconnection and interdependence of everything that is the sentientuniverse. 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 allaspects 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 ofpowerful forces. These forces act to punish conduct considered unacceptable because itconstitutes a transgression of norms insuring harmony between human beings, and theharmony between humans and Nature. (Bonfil Batalla, 1989/1996). According to theMexican writer Guillermo Marn, it will indeed be Nature itself that will force humans toappreciate the ancient Indigenous epistemology of Nature, once global warming andother changes caused by human transgressions against Nature begin to make themselves

be noticed (G. Marn, personal communication, July 10, 2007).

It is ironic that many of the things Western medicine is doing in order to cure diseasesand make human beings feel healthier are actually polluting the environment and causingmany 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 isresponsible for a wide range of environmental problems.


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For example, pharmaceutical products, which are not a normal part of diet, nor a foodpreviously encountered in evolution are a major source of pollution. Pharmaceuticalcompanies produce large quantities of pharmaceutical waste, and even when the waste istreated, the pharmaceutical substances often remain. Most pharmaceuticals are designed

to resist breakdown and to persist so that they can carry out their metabolic regulatoryactivities without interference from the human body. Unknown to most people, enormousquantities of pharmaceuticals and their metabolites are even contaminating theenvironment through their own bodies by means of excretion, where they are proving tohave powerfully negative impacts in ecosystems, and these quantities are increasingeveryday. Most pharmaceutical waste is not biodegradable and goes on producingchemical effects forever. Most that does biodegrade is regularly replenished by the needfor continual dosing or by new medical prescriptions for new people. Many wasteproducts stay in their original forms for months, years, or even centuries, and manypharmaceuticals concentrate in the stored fat of all creatures and effects on nontargetanimals are usually unknown. In addition to pharmaceutical waste, there is waste frompersonal care products, infectious medical and pathological waste, and waste fromchemotherapy and radioactive substances. Hazardous waste from medical treatments maywork itself into the environment even from cemeteries.

Another example of a major problem is the use of antibiotics. Due to the germ theory ofcontagion, germs and microbes have become considered enemies even though they formpart of the natural balance of the Earth. Antibiotic waste from antibiotic use is a part ofpharmaceutical waste and many anti-biotics (literally "against-life") do not discriminatein their activity--disrupting the entire ecosystem. In the long run, the massive use ofantibiotics 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 naturaldevelopment of resistance.

Traditional plant medicine used by Indigenous oral peoples on the other hand, areecological, in keeping with their ecocentric world-view. Plant medicines are ecologicalbecause they do not require expensive factories to make them, they do not dischargepollutants into the environment, have far fewer side effects (internally and externally), aresustainable, renewable, come from within local ecosystems, and the knowledge of theiruse 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 IndigenousMedicine, and not the other way around, since indigenous medicine is holistic andinclusive by its very definition and nature. However an important philosophical point isrevealed-just because humans are doing something to alleviate human suffering does notmean that we are exempt from the ecological consequences of doing it. Traditionalindigenous medicine is different from Western medicine because it unselfishly takes intoaccount the perspective of the plant and of the entire ecosystem, and not only the


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perspective of human beings. They literally are able to understand the plant's point ofview-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 - anunintegrated 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 toenvironmental catastrophe. Language becomes increasingly artificial, and words andmetaphors based on intimate knowledge of soils, plants, trees, animals, landscapes, riversand oceans have declined. Humans have forgotten the wildness and sacredness of theworld, and the natural ability to interact with, to learn from, and to communicate with thesurrounding living world in a sustainable way-indeed this is what is stolen from usthrough contemporary schooling practices and indoor-based Western culture (Buhner,2002). Dominant schooling practices today teach belief in scientific and technologicalprogress without noting the many side-effects, and this is paradigm is accepteduncritically by large numbers of people who only see what could be gained withoutseeing what is lost. The linguist and social critic Ivan Illich mentions how the currentmedical and educational systems control and mold people into narrow-minded "experts"that the contemporary economic system requires for itself, and discusses how members ofcontemporary society need to be "deschooled" in order to really learn (1970).

Homero Ardijis, the Mexican ecologist mentions how the twin evils of ecocide andethnocide 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 roughly5,000 languages now spoken on our planet, only 150 or so are expected to survive to theyear 2100. Language everywhere (much like what is happening in the natural world) isbeing 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 fromnon-Western Indigenous oral cultures, it is necessary to put aside the idea that there isonly one valid way of understanding the world (the chirographic-based EurocentricWestern epistemology), and to accept that the epistemology of the "Other" can also haveits validity and its use. Oral cultures and their healing traditions have been pushed asidein 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 intoday's world because they see the pattern that connects, and because they have afunctional sense of basic unity. The perspective of Indigenous medicine can be importantfor the healing of the planet itself.

References


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Aparicio Mena, A. (2005a). La medicina tradicional como medicina ecocultural.[Traditional medicine as ecocultural medicine]. Gazeta de Antropologa (21). RetrievedSeptember 5, 2007 from http://www.ugr.es/~pwlac/G21_10Alfonso_Aparicio_Mena.htmlAparicio Mena, A. (2005b). Las plantas en la cultura tradicional de salud Mesoamericana[Plants in the traditional Mesoamerican culture of health]. Revista de antropologaexperimental (5), 2-9. Retrieved September 5, 2007 fromhttp://www.ujaen.es/huesped/rae/articulos2005/aparicio2005.pdfAridjis, H. (1992, April 9). In the meeting of two natures. The Christian Science Monitor.Retreived September 9, 2007 fromhttp://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/data/his/ARIDJIS1.HISBonfil Batalla, G. (1996). Mxico profundo: Reclaiming a civilization [Mexico profundo:Una civilizacin negada] (P.A. Dennis,Trans.). Translations from Latin America series.Austin: University of Texas Press (Original work published in 1989).Buhner, S. H. (1996). Sacred plant medicine: Explorations in the practice of Indigenousherbalism. (1996). Boulder, CO: Rinehart.Buhner, S. H. (2002). The lost language of plants: The ecological importance of plantmedicines to life on Earth. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.Chevalier, J. M., & Bain, A. S. (2003). The hot and the cold: Ills of humans and maize inNative Mexico. Anthropological horizons, 24. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Garibay K., A. M. (1953). Historia de la literatura Nahuatl [History of Nahuatl literature].Mxico DF: Editorial Porra.

Illich, Ivan. (1970). Deschooling society: Social questions. New York: Harper and Row.Retrieved September 9, 2007 from http://reactor-core.org/deschooling.htmlLen Portilla, M. (2003). Cdices: Los antiguos libros del Nuevo Mundo [Codices: Theancient books of the New World]. Mxico, DF: Aguilar.Lpez Austin, A. (1988). The human body and ideology: Concepts of the ancient Nahuas[Cuerpo humano e ideologa: Las concepciones de los antiguos nahuas] (B. Ortiz deMontellano, Trans.). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press (Original work publishedin 1980).Lvi-Strauss, C. (1966). The savage mind [La Pense Sauvage] (John Weightman &Doreen Weightman, Trans.). The nature of human society series. Chicago: University ofChicago Press (Original work published in 1962).

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