Laws and Policies REALITIES ON THE GROUND

RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 134 Module-6 Gaps Analysis UNDRIP NATIONAL OR GAPS CONSIDERATIONS OPTIONS PROVISIONS ON LOCAL LAWS IMPLICATIONS RECOMMENDATIONS INDIGENOUS OR POLICIES PEOPLES AND DEVELOPMENT Paragraph or Specific laws, Specific laws, Can current laws, What needs to be Article number policies policies NOT policies be used to done? How? By conforming conforming support indigenous whom? Where? with UNDRIP with UNDRIP peoples’ positions When? For how or interests? Are long? there loopholes in the law that can be used for or against indigenous peoples? Should the matter be approached legally? Economics Health Education Information Other Social- Cultural Concerns Education Information RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 135 Ask the participants to discuss their peo- ple’s experiences in: • Advocacy and lobbying for the rec- ognition of rights related to develop- ment; • Action or mobilization to assert or protect these rights; Actual exercise or practice of the rights. To start off, you may refer to the examples provided below. Suggested Method

IV. EXPERIENCES

EXAMPLE Combining “Western” and Indigenous Medicine in Community Health Care Development In 1981, indigenous people who had undergone university training in medi- cine – including a couple of doctors and several nurses and medical technicians – established the Philippine non-govern- mental organization CHESTCORE short for Center for Health Education, Services and Training in the Cordillera Region. They serviced communities in the remot- est parts of the region, where neither gov- ernment nor church missions provided any health care. They did this by: • assessing health and sanitation conditions; • educating villagers about such matters as the need for latrines, pig pens, hand- washing and the segregation of eating utensils used by members of the household who had communicable diseases; • giving paramedical training to villagers who had the aptitude and commitment for community health work, and organizing them as CHWs Community Health Work- ers; • administering professional tests and treatments to persons with maladies that were beyond the CHWs’ capacity to diagnose and treat, and mobilizing other medi- cal professionals in the Cordillera to help with this through periodic medical mis- sions; • arranging for surgeries or procedures in urban clinics for cases that required spe- cial instruments, equipment or facilities. In the course of working with communities, the CHESTCORE encountered remark- able indigenous healers – most notably, in the village of Aguid, Sagada, Mountain Prov- ince, an elder named Manzano Domin-eng who was a walking encyclopedia on medici- nal plants in the tropical pine forest ecosystem. The CHESTCORE recruited a taxonomist and, starting with Domin-eng, documented indigenous knowledge of herbal medicine. They catalogued the plants, identifying these by their popular as well as scientific names, photographing then making scientific drawings of these, recording their medicinal us- age, then validating the uses both by subjecting the herbal preparations to chemical analysis in the laboratory and observing their efficacy on field. In 1986, they published the results in a compendium entitled Common Medicinal Plants of the Cordillera Re- gion. They developed standardized herbal preparations for simple ailments and, by 1990, were teaching CHWs throughout the region how to make and administer these properly. The CHESTCORE also documented other traditional healing methods. In 1996, they published a manual entitled Nainsigudan a Panangagas Traditional Healing and used this in the CHW trainings that they continued to give all over the region. Module-6 RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 136 By combining “western” with indigenous medicine, and by training more and more people in the use of both, the CHESTCORE had filled a big gap in the delivery of social services to indigenous peoples because, in most villages of the rugged Cordillera, there is no doctor. EXAMPLE Passing on the Knowledge of Generations In Sabah, Malaysia, a number of communities have been establishing community herbal gardens to promote traditional health care and also a way to pass on knowledge and practices to the next generation. Some communities are linking this to a project, Grandmothers’ Walk, with the local preschool centre, where children are brought to the herbal gardens to identify various medicinal plants and their uses. The community also keeps a registry of the plants and their uses but these information are kept strictly in the community to protect against bio-piracy. Through this project, community members have easy access to herbal medicines and some also hold workshops to do simple processing of these medicines as a way of promoting their use in families and to exchange views about the use and protection of traditional medicines. Most of those involved in the promotion of traditional medicines are women who still hold special knowledge and are active practitioners as part of their role to maintain good health of the family. EXAMPLES Incorporating indigenous peoples’ concerns in education The projects under the IMPECT umbrella in Thailand: Foothold in the Hills covering Chiang Mai and surrounding villages Supported by the Bernard Van Leer Foundation, www.bernardvanleer.org Objective: . . .to create and facilitate a positive learning and developmental environment for young children, whereby cultural identity and a sense of security in their own cul- ture are instilled, thus enabling them to act within Thai mainstream society. Participatory Alternative Education for Indigenous Children and Youth Supported by the Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation, www.pestalozzi.ch Nature: . . .promotes mother tongue class room teaching and the integration of local knowledge and skills into curricula. Muticulturalism and Education Policy Research Center Chiang Mai University Faculty of Education Objective: . . .to study on the linkage between education and culture, paving way for the mul- ticultural society. Module-6