Native Medicine
Native medicine - or indigenous medicine as it is likely more properly to be called - is medicine that resides within the Earth.
Our planet is internally engineered to provide for its inhabitants, and its systems and cycles are prepared to help sustain us. Unfortunately, we've outgrown our planet's control mechanism, and for the first time in history, human primates have reached point where they are past the point of preserving their natural resources. This has lead us down many bumpy roads - and will likely lead us down many more before this story reaches a conclusion - but the main point of this particular post is to discuss how it has affected our health and medicine. More importantly, how we can get back to a place where we can heal ourselves and our planet.
Native medicine was once practiced all over the planet. Historically, humans (and other animals) had no synthetic resources available, so reliance upon the planet's natural systems for culture, food, medicine and more was the only path available to us. However, the advent of agriculture and then - much later - the Industrial Revolution - have created for us opportunities to rely less upon the governance of our plant and more on our own wits, so to speak. Out of these two movements, we have now developed what is to be called modern (or more likely) conventional medicine, which involves mainly allopathic approaches to treatments of diseases and conditions within the human body that separates each human system into parts unto themselves.
Native medicine was also historically encapsulated within spiritualist traditions - in whatever variance those were present within the peopled geographic regions of the Earth. One example of this is to be seen in the study of the First Nations that once populated the North American continent, but there are many other significant examples, as well. Modern medicine is practiced apart from any spiritual tradition whatsoever. So native medicine was much more integrated into the lifestyles of its patients, and was broader and less restrictive and/or niche in scope than is modern medicine.
But the point is not to draw a comparison between the two. They are, in fact, two different things. Modern medicine is a discipline that is practiced by narrowly educated professionals. Native medicine was a way of living practiced by everyone on the planet. These two systems couldn't be more different. And now, with global resources stretched beyond thin due to overcrowding, overpopulation, and an abundance of abuse from entitled cultures across the world, we are faced with an ever-growing concern: the health of our humanity is in grave danger and frankly, we may not make it.
We have come so far. But just beneath our wandering feet is a proverbial line in the sand. In the words of Gandalf the Grey, this line says to us "You shall not pass!" We cannot proceed as we are. Our systems are failing, our divided cultures are dismantling before our very eyes, and the health and welfare of our human bodies is now at risk for an ever-growing host of nasty virulents that may end up taking us all out and might make COVID-19 look like only a dress rehearsal.
It's too late for many of our systems. We cannot save our governments - they are doomed to fail. We cannot maintain our strategically planned economies and mediums of exchange - these systems, too, are doomed to fail. Our planet, however, has been around longer than any of these - it knows by now how to manage wayward populations, and it has enough experience under its proverbial belt to govern its systems judiciously. Our plant is not in infancy - it has reached maturity. With its mature eye, it sees that we are headed for disaster. And it call us now to a deeper truth, a deeper understanding.
Native medicine - with its holistic view of the Earth and all its inhabitants - is the answer. This medicine will treat the health of our bodies, our minds, and our cultures. Native medicine, regardless of its myriad forms practiced individually in varying geographic communities, once helped us live in harmony with our environs and thrive alongside them. We were once great, before we lost our understanding of native medicine.
Can we unlearn all we've accumulated and make our way back toward native medicine once more?
