Traditional healing Mainstream Development Issues

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 RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP 127 Indigenous knowledge is widely recognized today as a rich source of information on ecosys- tems and their management; on biodiversity in general and the identity, characteristics and uses