The Shaman Is In

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

To institutionalize that effort, Plotkin helped the village create a shamans and apprentices program with stipends from ACT. Today, a hierarchy of senior and junior shamans oversees a handful of younger apprentices who shadow elder healers in the clinic and on trips into the forest to collect plants. Twice a week, schoolchildren gather next door to the clinic for lessons on plants and handicrafts.

The revival of traditional healing practices comes as cutbacks in government subsidies and spiraling costs have limited the reach of primary health care in Suriname's rural interior. Operating symbiotically, the two clinics have helped to fill the gap. Joint workshops inform the Western-trained caregivers about indigenous concepts of illnesses, and shamans learn about preventive health practices. They often refer patients to each other. For instance, villagers who show up at the Western clinic suffering from the parasitic disease leishmaniasis will be sent next door to the shamans for an ointment that's more effective than any modern tincture.

'It's not some mash-up where you've got shamans handing out antibiotics,' says Plotkin. 'It gives [locals] a lot more free choice than I have with my health plan and has demonstrably reduced the expense for outside medicine by 20 to 50 percent.'

The clinics' practices are also helping in a larger effort, pushed by the WHO, to develop stronger evidence of traditional medicine's quality, safety, and efficacy. The clinics in Suriname have begun keeping records, and pharmacists there have introduced shamans to standardized measurement methods for collecting, preparing, and storing their medicines--efforts that will shed light on their efficacy and facilitate the production of medicines. They're now experimenting with more user-friendly (and potentially marketable) forms, such as a dry tea bag.

Ultimately, though, the broader intention of the program, explains Plotkin, is for tribes to find their own answers to some pressing questions: 'How do we interface with Western science? What are we willing to share? . . . And how do we take an approach that benefits our culture, our forests, and, in the end, everybody?'

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print