Traditional occupations Mainstream Development Issues

RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 125 » bone setting; » surgery; » energy healing; » spiritual healing; • mediation with ancestor and nature spirits; • divining; • mediation of intra-community and inter-community conflicts. Development interventions ought not to put these traditional occupations at risk, consider- ing that they fulfill the following functions: • They are the means by which families and communities provide for their own needs in food, shelter and clothing, and even their cash needs. • Involving the pooling, sharing, or exchange of labor, material resources, products, or finan- cial resources, they help consolidate inter-family bonds and community ties. • Involving exchanges of seeds and broods, traditional farming promotes agricultural biodi- versity. • Traditional occupations serve as venues for the transmission of indigenous knowledge – horizontally, among the members of a community and among different communities; verti- cally, from the older generations to the younger. • They also serve as venues for the practice of collective decision-making, communication, and cooperation within and among the communities. • They are thus essential to the maintenance of economic, cultural and political stability within and among communities.

3. Traditional healing

Indigenous health practitioners have been servicing their communities for millennia. Yet their work is, at best, regarded as “alternative” medi- cine and, at worst, as “quackery”. Non-recognition by state health authorities has led to the marginalization and loss of income of indigenous health practitioners, and contributed significantly to the deterioration of indigenous knowledge on health. In some countries, the problem is compounded by religious intolerance of the indigenous health practitioners. This has even involved serious human rights violations, such as the killing of so-called “witches”, who are mainly women. In most countries, state health authorities give recognition only to the practitioners and products of “western” medicine. In developing countries, public health officials help encourage the use of the pharma- ceutical products of private corporations by distribut- ing promotional samples of these during individual consultations, community education seminars and area medical missions. Yet the state is often unable to sustain the delivery of professional medical care and pharmaceuticals to rural populations. This is be- cause state budgetary allocations to health are gener- ally limited, especially in developing countries. The state does not appreciate the traditional practices of community midwives in attending births Module-6 RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 126 and providing maternal care, yet these are important to consider in programs for reducing the rates of maternal and child mortality in rural areas. There is little or no official support for re- search towards the validation of “alternative medicine”. Yet pharmaceutical corporations have been engaged in bio-prospecting and bio-piracy – stealing and profiting on indigenous peoples’ knowledge of medicinal plants, animals and minerals, and patenting the products as original “discoveries” or “inventions” to which they have exclusive rights of sale. Despite generally unfavorable conditions, however, indigenous peoples have been able to ex- ercise their rights to the improvement of their health conditions and to the maintenance of their own, indigenous health systems. • Many have been documenting their indig- enous knowledge on health, especially in the field of herbal medicine, and conscious- ly placing the knowledge in the public do- main so that it cannot be privately patented but, rather, become accessible to all. • In some countries, it has become possi- ble for indigenous herbalists to work with chemists to standardize their preparations – i.e., prepare herbal tablets, tinctures, syr- ups, ointments, etc. with a specific measure- ment of the amount of active ingredients these contain so that they can be adminis- tered in standard doses. In India and the Philippines, the herbal preparations can be submitted to pharmaceuticals-regulating authorities, who would then verify the con- tents by chemical analysis and license the sale of the preparations following defined standards of labelling. • In some countries, it has become possible for indigenous healers to apply to the govern- ment for license to practice, and a few have done so. In fact, some organizations have set up licensed clinics where indigenous health treatments are made publicly available.

4. Indigenous knowledge

Indigenous knowledge is largely the collective knowledge of a community. Thus, except for matters sacred or arcane, almost all knowledge is available for access by all the members of the community, and is often freely shared even with people outside the community. In indigenous knowledge systems, there is usually no real separation between knowledge and practice. Knowledge cannot be compartmentalized. It is incorporated in language. It is integrated with spiritual and ethical beliefs, with rules of ritual and customary law. It includes knowledge about nature and how human beings should relate with other beings in their natural environment; about society and how human beings should relate with one another. Although embodied in tradition, it is not static. Indigenous knowledge is both founded upon generations of experience and enriched by more recent experiences. It is dynamic and cumulative. It is thus capable of giving rise to innovations in technique and technology. Module-6