Fourth World Eye Blog » Health An Online Daily Journal of the Center for World Indigenous Studies Wed, 15 Oct 2014 17:07:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Ancient Knowledge Systems and IGC Bioethics Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:18:18 +0000 Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D. The UNESCO International Bioethics Committee and the member states of the Intergovernmental Bioethics Committee commenced the 19th Session of the IBC at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on the 11th and 12th of September to consider the “Draft Report of IBC on Traditional Medicine and its Ethical implications.”  The draft contains numerous flaws and perhaps most importantly it lacks a scholarly foundation from indigenous peoples.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization International bioethics Committee (IBC) had asked more than 100 specialized research institutes throughout the world to answer questions intended to secure information about traditional medical practices, their institutional framework and legal regulation. The IBC also called upon traditional health practitioners from different regions of the world to participate in discussions presenting their points of view and experience with traditional medicine.  Absent an understanding of ancient knowledge systems, their structures and how they work, and relying on only what can be called a cursory and largely superficial consideration of the present state of existing scholarly understanding about ancient knowledge, the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO may now only draw one conclusion:

1) Seventy percent to 90% of the peoples living in developing countries and perhaps 40% to 60% of the citizens living in so called developed countries rely on traditional medicines and healing practices  as a primary source of health care or in the case of developed countries as a frequent source of health care.

2.) In many countries there are more traditional healers than there are conventional medical practitioners,

3) The effectiveness and benefits of traditional medicines and healing practices are not measured or understood by conventional medical systems,

4) Users of traditional medicines and healing appear to benefit from treatments for mental disorders, chronic health conditions including rheumatism, metabolic disorders, neurological anomalies and conditions including diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and obesity, abdominal pains, diarrhea, jaundice and malaria.

Concerned that traditional medicine may forestall access to “modern medicine” the IBC suggests that “cultural familiarity” cannot be used to obstruct such access. In reality, like the World Health Organization that also seeks to classify traditional medicines and healing practices and argues that such practices “should be respected, preserved, promoted and communicated widely and appropriated based on the circumstances in each country” (Beijing Declaration), the argument is that states’ governments should “ensure appropriate, safe and effective use of traditional medicine” under state laws and standards.

The problem with the IBC approach and ultimately that of the World Health Organization is that they conclude that states’ governments should assume regulatory control over traditional medicine and healing practices when UNESCO, the WHO or states’ governments do not understand, have no means to understand or seems unwilling to understand the ancient knowledge systems that are foundational to traditional medicines and healing practices anywhere in the world.  How can a State respect, preserve, promote and communicate traditional medicines and healing practices about which they understand virtually nothing?

The ultimate violation of ethical practice would seem to be inherent in the UNESCO, WHO and states’ government approach to relegating traditional medicine and healing practices to a “precious resource” that is only useful if it is placed under the guiding hand of “modern medicine” so such practices can be clarified. This approach, of course, ignores the infancy of “modern medicine” and the confounding errors of modern medicine–witness the inability to heal and prevent chronic disease-representing 80% of human illness. Achieving the “highest attainable standard of health” so urgently and earnestly sought by the International Bioethics Committee might well be best achieved by first seeking to understand the structures of ancient knowledge systems on which traditional medicine and healing practices are based before urging state institutional control over the very thing it does not understand.

Discussions of traditional knowledge in the international arena and in academic institutions have only begun to scratch the surface of understanding the structures of ancient knowledge systems. The systems of knowledge provide not only health and healing (and has been done so for thousands of years), but created the very basis for civilization: architecture, water engineering, agronomy, astrophysics, quantum physics, the hugely fragmented sciences, social order, political organizations, mathematics, music and the arts, and much more.

A good prescription for the International Bioethics Committee would be to directly engage indigenous scholars around the world who individually and collectively contribute to defining the fabric of ancient knowledge on which communities and civilizations base their traditional medicines and healing practices.  Perhaps the best model for proceeding is to consider the examples of Ghana, Tibet, the Diné, the Mayan DayKeepers, Mapuché healers and support a sustained effort to have these and thousands of other indigenous peoples explain the structures and elements of the ancient systems of knowledge on which they base their medicinal and healing practices.

At the moment, UNESCO, IBC, the WHO, states governments and academic institutions interested in benefiting from ancient knowledge act as if they are “one hand clapping.”  To make a full and effective sound they must work with indigenous peoples, their scholars and their practitioners in a concerted effort as collaborators–not controllers. Now, that would be ethical.

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Dr. Mirjam Hirch Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:49:31 +0000 Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D. She was an intern at the Center for World Indigenous Studies in 2001 and then she took on the important responsibilities of a CWIS Fellow focusing on Traditional Medicine Policy.  She traveled to Tajikistan, to Switzerland, Mexico and Australia advocating the development of an implementation of policies in governments and international organizations that will advance the practice of traditional medicine. Then she traveled to Canada to explore the question of oolichan oil and its benefits for health. And, while she did all of this she became an Associate Scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies. The woman who set on a vigorous course of research and advocacy is Mirjam Hirch from Darmstadt, Germany.

  Dr. Mirjam Hirch, Darmstadt, Germany

Not satisfied with these accomplishments Mirjam has added another achievement: She has earned her doctorate and is now Dr. Mirjam Hirch.

We at the Center for World Indigenous Studies are very proud of Dr. Hirch’s accomplishment and offer our very best congratulations.  The world has in Mirjam a powerful voice for the benefit of traditional medicine and for indigenous peoples. Thank you Dr. Mirjam Hirch!

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GMO vs Natural Foods and Good Health Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:06:29 +0000 Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D. After more than six thousand years of row crop agriculture virtually all foods in the grocery store have been so altered they are “almost without nutritional substance–so Allison Stevens asserts in her online article: Nutritional Value of Wild Foods verses Cultivated Foods. Human cultivation produces “hybridized” plants and animals; and such interaction between people and natural sources of food alters the food we eat–often by reducing nutritional benefit.

What is now called “permaculture,” but I think of as “earth gardening,” is a system of thought and practice developed by Australian ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s that attempts to mirror the interactive food producing relationship between indigenous peoples and their environment.  While it is not equivalent, permaculture can serve as metropolitan society’s best understanding of direct human-environment living balance. The successful bi-directional interdependence between human-beings and the natural environment varies in form and practice among indigenous nations around the world. The differences between nations constitutes the variety of human/environment adaptions to micro-climates and environments.  This organically evolved approach to diverse adaptions can be clearly recognized as the main success for all of human survival.

Despite the considerable benefit to human survival achieved through a balance between human want and nature’s capacity to reproduce more direct efforts to control nature (such as row cropping, pesticides, irrigation, transplantation and since the 1990s the use of genetic modification) methods for expanding the production of food for biological and commercial benefit introduced a radical alteration and basic reductions in the quality of food and nutrition.

Foods (animal and plant) produced as a direct consequence of natural interactions between plants, animals, and climate contain vastly more nutritional benefits for human beings than commercially produced foods. Simple nutritional comparisons between plants and animals in the “wild” their domesticated (commercial) equivalents reveal how sharply reduced are the nutritional values in commercial foods.

Chronic disease is rapidly consuming the global health budget where 80% of all health problems are chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, cancers, arthritis, allergies and autoimmune disease. Before the advent of “modern agriculture” (read: industrialized agriculture) such chronic conditions were a very small part of the human health profile.





Indigenous nations must know that their age-old systems of food production and the evolved adaptation of these systems to respond to climate and environmental changes are the systems on which all of humanity will have to turn if the current “new” systems fail. There is no doubt that these new systems will fail.  When compared with the thousands of years humans have successfully engaged in “earth gardening” the current food production systems pail. Quantity for quality has been the exchange since the advent of industrial and GMO for production. Much more food with less or little nutritional value, but substantially more harmful content to the human body may be a commercial success, but it is a failure for human health and human survival.


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Oceans of Toxins Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:11:42 +0000 Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D. The oceans that feed and nurture life the world over are increasingly poisoned by human activity with the result that the oceans are “experiencing severe declines in many species to the point of commercial extinction … an unparalleled rate of regional extinction of habitat types (eg. mangroves and seagrass meadows), … and now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems.”







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Sex Trafficking and Indigenous People Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:25:27 +0000 Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D. Sex sells and it makes people money.  If you enslave people and traffick in prostitution you are committing a crime against humanity producing huge sums of money for those who promote sex trafficking. Men and some women commit this odious crime and mostly men who sit in the halls of government in many countries act as if sex trafficking and prostitution are just another kind of business that should be protected by the laws of government.  Sex trafficking is a crime and it must be stopped.  We all have a duty to commit ourselves to defeating the attitude that is acceptable to sexually enslave people.

Indigenous peoples in Thailand, the Congo, India, Canada, the United States, Australia and nearly every country in the world are caught up in this despicable trade in human flesh.  The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women in the Asia Pacific (CATW-AP) is doing something about reversing the terrible violence committed against women and against children. This group sponsored an important meeting in India calling attention to the sexual violence being committed against the indigenous peoples.

In the conference declaration they joined in affirming:

We unite with our sisters in the feminist movement and the labor movement who call for real jobs, not prostitution; for economic programs that create local, sustainable employment, and not push women out of the country; for the socialization of the care economy while recognizing that domestic work is work; for greater budget for women and away from military expenditures.

We unite with the Dalits, aborigines and indigenous peoples’ movements in the region who decry the targeting of our communities for sex trafficking and prostitution.

(Statement of Asia-Pacific Meeting of Sex Trafficking and Prostitution Survivors)

The Declaration goes on to point the finger at government that criminalizes and stigmatizes those exploited in prostitution and calls on authorities to reverse this type of behavior.

The message given at the conference is that trafficking in sex must stop. Official acceptance of prostitution must stop.  For indigenous peoples it is essential that their mistreatment and exploitation become recognized and understood…and most of all — ENDED.

The Declaration makes clear where and how this scourge survives:

Prostitution thrives because of the false ideas that women are inferior, sexual objects and commodities while men are superior, the sole decision-makers and owners of properties.  Many of us have been victimized in child marriage, incestuous rape, different forms of child abuse, and domestic violence before we were victimized in prostitution.  The system thrives because economic disparity widens between the rich and the poor.  Because state policies continue to compromise our countries to sex tourists, foreign and local military, and big business, at the expense of our women’s livelihoods and bodily integrity.  These are the workings of patriarchal, militarist and neo-liberal economic policies.

Dr. Melissa Farley, President and lead researcher for Prostitution Research and Education in California, USA and CWIS Associate Scholar persuasively demonstrates that prostitution and all forms of sex trafficking constitute a form of organized violence against women generally and against indigenous women in countries around the world. Her work is essential to improving public awareness and understanding of sex trafficking and prostitution and violence in society.

Crime against the most vulnerable is despicable. Crime against women, against indigenous women, is inexcusable.  It must be punished and eradicated.


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Food Security Overseas and at Home Sun, 06 Feb 2011 19:06:16 +0000 Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D. Perhaps 1 billion or more of the world’s population suffer from material poverty and hunger with sixty-five percent of those living in just seven countries (WFP, 2010) [India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia] according to the United Nations World Food Program. Sixty percent of those who lack sufficient food are women, and according to UNICEF’s estimates in 2007 more than 10 million children under five die in developing countries each year due to malnutrition and hunger-related disease.





When people are no longer able to either produce or purchase food in large measure due to the five major causes of hunger plus corporate control over more food producing land, the cost of food rises and food becomes inaccessible–the number of people hungry and dying increases worldwide.

A major adjustment needed in the world food production system is to localize more food production by returning land to peoples whose land was “legally” taken (e.g., Brazil, Mexico, Botswana), or confiscated under government control (Zimbabwe) or lands stolen outright as in the case of Darfur in the Sudan. Governments should sponsor rural development programs to support local food production from agriculture to permaculture and wildcrafting.




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GMO Profits and killing the Seed Fri, 04 Feb 2011 20:04:52 +0000 Rudolph C. Rÿser, Ph.D. Political leaders, academic and corporate leaders alike credit bioengineering and related technologies as 21st century achievements that will feed the world and cure diseases. In just a few short years, businesses have popped up in the market place to garner billions in profits from genetically modified foods, pesticides and herbicides and human ears and noses that grow in a small dish under warm lights on a laboratory bench.  All of this could be hailed as a collection of remarkable achievements–testaments to the wonders of conventional science, but there are serious problems with the mélange of businesses and scientists that results in “science for profit.” In their rush to make scientific discoveries about the genome, and the capacity to manipulate genes changing the character and makeup of organic plants and animals and convert them into short-term profits, major businesses such as Monsanto, Cargil, Archer Daniels Midland, Wal-Mart, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Kraft, Dean Foods, the Farm Bureau, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta are producing deadly products that are now destroying living soil, plants and animals to the detriment of life on the planet.

I realize this sounds hysterical, but the products these businesses make with the help of conventional scientists and sell directly and indirectly into the human food chain have spread far beyond the laboratories. The introduction of genetically modified foods (GMOs) and genetically engineered (GE) pesticides and herbicides as well as animals are causing greater direct damage to human food security, the ability of the earth to naturally regenerate in the soils and atmosphere and in the waters of rivers, streams and springs. Chemicals that destroy life are being dumped into the unregulated market of countries around the world (particularly 2nd, 3rd and 4th world) countries and increasingly in regulated markets such as the European Union, Canada and the United States, Australia and Japan.

The United States government’s penchant to throw caution to the wind and allow businesses to produce life threatening contaminants into the atmosphere, waterways, soils and food is legion.  This country is the source of growing contamination of soils, crops and animals from GMO and GE products resulting in not only increasing unexplained illnesses, environmental degradation and business dependent crops, but the indigenous seeds of plants and stocks of animals used by indigenous peoples to produce food in small eco-niches around the world are losing their food security to giant, unseen businesses.

In México’s indigenous territories, thought to be quite remote from corporate farms using GMO seeds, the diversity of the more than 65 indigenous varieties of maize are now threatened with contamination.  Developed over several millennia as a result of the cultural relationship between generations of Maya and Nahuatl peoples, the land and the maize itself these many varieties have sustain peoples faced with drought, high heat and strong winds–changing climates–and they continue today.  In other words, the culturally sustainable process of human and plant relationships have produced replantable seeds that are the foundation of life in Mexico.  These seeds are also the original genetic stock from which corn throughout the world has been developed.

But experts say Mexico’s native varieties are themselves under peril —
from economics and genetic contamination — potentially depriving humans
of a crucial resource.

As indigenous peoples are discovering and conventional scientists are beginning to notice genetically modified corn is drifting deep into Mexico’s heart lands through “trespassing pollen” in the air, and sacks of Monsanto GMO seed corn. Such “trespassing” poses a major threat to indigenous peoples’ health as well as to the very existence of the native maize seeds that constitute the world’s original maize genetic diversity necessary to the world should the grain fields in the world suffer climate change disasters.

In early 1981 I sat in a private meeting at the UN Development Program in New York City with Senior Advisor to the Director General Erskin Barton Childers (1929-1996) (the eldest son of Ireland’s fourth President Erskine Hamilton Childers). I had sought Childers out to discuss measures taken by the United Nations Development and International Economic Co-operation Agency to ensure global food security–especially protection of indigenous peoples’ food sources. Very directly Childers explained in detail how the UNDP and other agencies of the UN had been developing “seed banks” where plant seeds from each region were being stored in great refrigerators. This, he advised, was to ensure their availability in the future if disaster should strike in the form of massive drought, storms, torrential rains, or freezing blizzards

The seeds, he noted were frequently of ancient origins used by native peoples in regions throughout the world.

One problem, Childers quickly explained, “if someone pulls the plug, as had happened last year, the seeds would be destroyed by the sudden temperature change resulting in their complete loss.”

After further discussion, Childers agreed with my suggestion that perhaps the most effective way to ensure preservation and protection of native seeds and animal diversity that represent the world’s wild and domesticated plant and animal varieties is to protect indigenous communities, their connection to the land and their continuing use of organically evolved seed diversity.

Through protection of indigenous peoples’ cultural diversity the protection and maintenance of human food security is achieved.  Destruction of indigenous communities and particularly the relationship between indigenous people and their territories is both “culturalicide,” and genocide resulting in lost precious knowledge essential for human survival and adaptation, and lost genetically diverse plant seeds and animals essential for human survival.

Maintaining the world’s food and seed diversity has been a major concern of countries and international organizations for more than a century.  For indigenous peoples plant and animal genetic diversity is a natural consequence of cultural diversity among indigenous peoples engaged in cultures adapted to specific ecosystems. Interruption of this relationship spells disaster for indigenous peoples and for humanity at large.  The whole world depends on plant and animal diversity supporting effective adaption to changing environmental conditions. Genetically modified organisms produced by businesses interested in profiting from human food dependency are killing seeds on which the world must depend and thus limiting the capacity for food security adaption.

Corporate businesses engaged in genetic engineering produce standardized plants and animals with reduced genetic diversity. States’ governments such as the United States promote liberalized regulatory frameworks that eliminate testing or consistent methods for evaluating the potential contamination of the human food chain that may result from introducing genetically engineered seeds and foods. Contamination of genetically diverse crops contribute to the breakdown of plant genetic varieties and thus reduces their capacity to support human adaptation to changing environmental conditions.  This is done not only by contaminating the fields, but eventually forcing indigenous farmers to purchase seeds from companies like Monsanto as a result of enforced “intellectual property laws” and seeds that will not replant.

Corporations that produce genetically modified foods, seeds and other organisms are not being held accountable and therefore constitute for humanity–outlaws. Permitted to continue their hostile takeover of the world’s native food production such corporations with the handy support of governments are no longer probably causing a disaster, they have been causing a disaster killing the seeds of life for more than two generations.


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Indigenous Doctors Congress 2010 Sat, 28 Aug 2010 05:43:34 +0000 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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Historical Ignorance Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:27:17 +0000 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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The US Fails on Climate Change – Indigenous Peoples Threatened Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:10:13 +0000 Mirjam Hirch As I suggested about a year ago, shortly after the US House of Representatives passed its version of climate change legislation, the Senate will fail to move on a Bill, and the whole federal effort will stop dead in its tracks.  Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the climate bill is dead in this session of Congress.

This circumstance leaves the US Environmental Protection Agency as the only federal entity able to act on carbon dioxide and green house gas emission reductions. Republican and Democratic Senators now turn to target this agency to prevent government regulation of emissions.

This circumstance also leaves the states in the position of defining the rules, regulations and standards for climate change mitigation and adaption.

Finally, this puts the Climate Change Treaty Negotiations to meet in Cancun, Mexico this December in a shambles…much the same as in Copenhagen last year.

The failure of the United States of America to responsibly advance constructive climate mitigation and adaption strategies is a major problem for the US, indigenous peoples and the international community. Corporate and other narrow interests have utterly compromised the US position.  Power companies, coal mine operations, oil companies, automobile companies, and even industrial farms are all part of the mosaic of interests undermining the political will to effectively address the adverse affects of climate change. Parochial interests combined with global energy have completely undermine the ability of the US government to act.  Political dysfunction is rapidly driving the decision-making process into the mud.

Indigenous peoples are, in this observer’s view, at greater risk now than ever before.  Indigenous peoples must take the initiative to set new rules, regulations and their own cultural standards for ecosystems where they reside.  Instead of depending on the states’ government authorities and organization to formulate favorable policies they must preempt the international community and the local state authorities or they will be overwhelmed by corporate driven policies that will further impose havoc in indigenous territories.  As this view suggests, failure to initiate effective responses to the adverse affects of climate change in indigenous territories by indigenous communities threatens all populations.  The onus is on indigenous leaders to initiate their own authority where climate change mitigation and adaptation has the greatest effect: the local ecosystem.

I hear everyone say, “We need money!” I don’t deny that, but the will to act must precede the money.  If there is no will, then there is no action.

The most troubling, and not unexpected, circumstance in the US Senate is that there is a majority (Republican and Democratic) of senators protecting energy, power, and development corporate interests.  Instead of identifying alternatives to sustain economies, the general tendency is to simply maintain the status quo.

This attitude prevails in virtually all industrialized states in the world.  Consequently, there is no willingness to negotiate alternative strategies for mitigating and adapting to the adverse affects of climate change.

Indigenous peoples have virtually no allies in states’ government legislative or administrative bodies. Failure to recognize this fact will cause serious problems for indigenous peoples’ cultures, economies and social environment in the months and years to come.

Taking independent action to protect and care for indigenous territories and communities must now be seen as essential.  Coalitions of indigenous nations should be considered to work together in similar environmental niches. Indigenous organizations must turn their attention to the midterm and long term continuity of indigenous communities and give their significant resource support to indigenous community decision-making, informing indigenous publics and supporting local regulatory, and cultural standard setting for climate mitigation and adaptation.

All of this is not to say that indigenous nations should now ignore regional, country-wide and international actions on climate change.  Indeed, it is more important now that these arenas receive attention.  Monitor and stay informed while taking independent action. The sustained existence of indigenous communities in the US and world-wide depends on indigenous peoples exercising the will to develop their own strategies for adapting to the changing climate.

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