History of Indigenous Healing | aboriginal-healing

Definitions of Indigenous Healing

It has long been regarded that dominant western perspectives of health and healing ignore the diverse wealth of healing knowledge possessed by Indigenous peoples, where traditional healing practices are subordinated to western curative processes (Adelson & Lipinski 2008; Fiske 2008). Resultantly, traditional Indigenous healing is an important and often underestimated part of health care (World Health Organisation [WHO] 2014). While western worldviews tend to consider healing as an outcome of clinical delivery, the World Health Organisation (WHO 2014) speak of traditional Indigenous healing methodology as being more of a composite of ontological, cosmological and epistemological perspectives. Here the WHO definition aligns more readily with how indigenous peoples of the world understand the nature of traditional healing to be (Archibald 2006).

This shared ideal of holism is embodied by both individual and healer of the Ngangkari

of Aboriginal Australia, the Rongoa Maori of New Zealand and the Native American

Indian people of the Americas, as the foundation from which their traditional healing

practices are appropriated (Waldram 2008).

On a global scale, Indigenous traditional healing accounts for 80 per cent of health

care in Africa and 40 per cent of health care in China, where traditional methods

comprise of herbal medicines, the use of animal parts and both manual and spiritual Failure to recognise the Ngangkari skills

therapies, in order to mediate diagnosis, treat illness and maintain the wellbeing

of entire indigenous and non-indigenous populations (WHO 2014).

However, as conveyed in the provided YouTube clip, in Australia the efficacy of Ngangkari, or Aboriginal traditional healing, is still contested by proponents of biomedicine (Panzironi 2013). Although the literature supports many definitions of health and healing from within global Indigenous contexts (Adelson & Lipinski 2008; Fletcher & Denham 2008; Waldram 2008), most have common rudiments, found across those continents where Indigenous people have an experience of having been colonised (Archibald 2006; Smith 20

Maori Tapu (Secret Business)

Holism, Personification & Omniscience

The literature on Maori, Aboriginal and Native American Indian healing practices suggest that these Indigenous people promote health, wellbeing and healing more holistically than approaches implemented by western medical models (Hewson 1998; Smith 2003). Furthermore, the spirit and the emotions are differentiated and a distinction is drawn between mental and physical expressivity (Calabrese, 2013). There is a frequent reference to balance and harmony within the literature concerned with traditional healing practices (Chansonneuve 2005) and an emphasis is also placed on an individual’s relationship with their families’ and communities’ as determinants of health (Lane et al. 2002).

Prior to the brutal processes of European colonisation, which was for the

most part justified by notions of Indigenous exceptionalism (Smith 2003),

the Maori, Aboriginal and Native American Indian people had a reciprocal

relationship with the land, flora and fauna of their territories

(Atkinson 2002).

Aboriginal Smoking Ceremony

Healing was an inclusive concept, where in the context of medicine, personification was embedded within most aspects of every-day ceremonial life (Lane et al. 2002). Connection to land was also understood as being central for the maintenance and promotion of the health, of not only their individual clan members, but of the entire tribal group as well (Atkinson Native American Indian Experience of Colonisation 2013; Williams & Sternthal 2007).

In fact, central to the healing ideologies of these three Indigenous groups

are both spiritual holism and interpersonal collectivist ideals

(Lane et al. 2002; Williams & Sternthal 2007). However, it was the

personification of the landscape which gave rise to the land and all of its

constituents, as being fundamental to the ritualistic healing practices of

these Indigenous communities (Panzironi 2013). As the basis from

which to promote and maintain good health, the need for balance, or

holism between ‘all things’, was a central tenet of the spirituality of the

Maori, Aboriginal and Native American Indian people and also formed the

basis of the traditional healing practices which they transmitted

generationally (Calabrese 2013).

While the need to heal from the trauma of colonial domination is a Aboriginal Experience of Colonisation

relatively new ‘sickness’, there are similarities between the way in which

Maori, Aboriginal and Native American Indian healers integrate aspects of the environment to cleanse the spirit of suffering (Lopez & Tascon 2003; Panzironi 2013; Rice 2003). Historically this has involved the understanding that the past is connected to the present and that the spirit can carr with it past life, or enduring dis-ease that it needs to be cleansed from (Archibald 2006; Lopez & Tascon 2003; Panzironi 2013; Rice 2003). Furthermore, in deviation from western models of health promotion, there are many similarities among the way in which Indigenous healing practices respond to an individual who has caused suffering towards another (Archibald 2006). Here healing is understood as being ‘a spiritual process that includes recovery, therapeutic change and cultural renewal’ (Phillips & Bamblett 2009, p.4).

Indigenous ideologies of therapeutic change tend to regard dealing with trauma in a safe and culturally-appropriate environment, rather than within an interaction

between clinician and individual (Mark 2012). Tenets of cultural renewal permeate the ideals of healing traditionally, as does strengthening and reconnecting with identity, which can be facilitated through language, dance and song

(Archibald 2006; Panzironi 2013). Traditional Aboriginal Use of the Land

Fundamentally, Indigenous traditional

healing aims to realign imbalance or disharmony between the body, mind, and the spirit of individuals, families, communities

and the living environment, which it is believed can also be

impacted by ill health (Archibald 2006; Smith 2009).

For the most part this is facilitated at the spirit level, where

traditional Indigenous conceptions of health and wellbeing

maintain that if the spirit is out of alignment with the physical body, illness can result (Archibald 2006; Panzironi 2013).

Opposite to western notions of ageism, the esteem afforded

Elders across each of these Indigenous peoples revere the wisdom that they possess of sacred lore as being omniscient, believing

that they hold insight that has been handed down to them by a higher divinity, deity or creator spirit, to guide and shape the

future generations and keep them safe from harm (Archibald 2006). Native American Indian Wisdom

Furthermore, these beliefs are “entrenched in indigenous culture and continue to exist in traditional healing systems, regardless of societal changes or technological advancements in medicine” (Mark 2012, p. 20).

Native American Omniscience

The Role of Healers

Colonial perceptions of traditional healing positioned those whom practiced as being an antithesis to the very foundations of civil life (Archibald 2006; Panzironi 2013) and this perception is embodied by westernised countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the Americas as an underestimation of the utility of Indigenous healing practices (Panzironi 2013). Traditional healing is so much more than lotions and potions and is allot more complex than the westernised cultural appropriation of the practitioner/patient healing context (Archibald 2006, Panzironi 2013; Smith 2003).

However, what maintains across all healing contexts throughout the world,

indigenous and non-indigenous is the centrality of the health belief that

attending a Doctor or Counsellor, Sharman or‘Clever-man’ will be yield a curative

effect (Smith 2003). It was the restorative faith invested in these culturally

indigenous healing traditions that elevated the stature of traditional healers

within their tribal groups, perhaps allot like the omniscience of Doctors as

healers within their respective fields today (Fletcher & Denham 2008).

Since time immemorial traditional Indigenous healers have been revered for

being in direct linage with the creator spirits and akin to contemporary Doctors,

considered as being omniscient, for their capacity to know everything that there Role of Maori Healer

is to know to promote wellbeing (Smith 2003). The role of healers within these

traditional contexts wasn’t just to heal, it was to implement transgenerational teachings around tribal spiritual lores and to guide, nurture, mend and facilitate healing and wellness holistically (Smith 2003; Panzironi 2013).

For the most part this was facilitated by drawing on the wisdom of or directly channelling ancestral spirits, using consciousness altering substances, plants, berries and or incantations, in order to effect a balance between the environment and the ill (Mark 2012; Panzironi 2013). In sum, illness as understood by traditional healers across Maori, Aboriginal and Native American Indian contexts relates to a state of ‘spiritual dysfunction’, which requires the environmental and at times, the social milieu to be renewed (Archibald 2006; Mark 2012; Panzironi 2013). One aspect of Aboriginal spirituality posits that causation for sickness, or dis-ease is related to past life ‘debts’ and this ideal of requiring to master the lessons of life is also central to Native American Indian existential ideals (Smith 2003).

Ceremony, Ritualism & Healing

In respect to the traditional healing practices of the Maori, Native

American Indian and Aboriginal people, achieving health does not just

mean to promote the physical well-being of the individual, rather it refers

to promoting the social, emotional and cultural well-being of the whole

community and their environment (Adelson & Lipinski 2008; Mark 2012;

Smith 2003). With ideals of both collectivism and personification in mind,

a whole of life view that includes the cyclical concept of life-death-life is

also central to the ceremonies and rituals associated with traditional

Indigenous healing practices (Panzironi 2013). Summarised by one Maori Warriors

researcher ‘well-being in most Indigenous communities includes the

overlapping relationship between humans and forces in the spirit world" (McVicker 2010, p. xxxv) and it is here, that ceremony and ritual use in traditional healing practices is understood to be the conduit for connecting with these divine energies (Panzironi 2013).

Ritualistic Peyote Cactusingestion, understood to cultivate spiritual renewal and life course insight for ‘patients’ is a form of psychedelic consciousness modification that has been culturally appropriated by the Navaho Native American Indian people of North America (Calabrese 2013). Facilitated in a controlled healing environment, under direct supervision of a traditional healer, Peyote ingestion is revered for its ability to allow ‘patients’ to transceand the mortal consiousness and seek life course clarification and wisdom from the ‘divine’ one (Calabrese 2013). The Navaho Peyotist’s believe that the Peyote Cactus in and of itself is a spiritual entity that serves as the Maori Traditional Massage messenger between humans and the Creator (Calabrese 2013). Ceremonial use of the Peyote Cactus induces severe vomiting and hallucinations, the latter providing key insights for ‘patients’ into the cause of their disease and with guidance from the traditional healer, the opportunity to realign their conscious self in such a way

as to mend the doctrine of the consequences of their past life deeds

(Calabrese 2013). Maori traditional healing follows the same

foundational concepts of restorative balance and healers believe that

past life transgressions invade the present, conscious experience of

living (Paine 2013). Maori traditional healing involves a suite of

modalities that seek to realign the spirit within the body, in such a

way as to unify the conscious, unconscious, past and present ‘selves’

and create the desired balance (Mark 2012). Traditional Maori healing

methodology includes a wide range of intervention such as faith

healing, therapeutic touch and spiritual practices which are

supported by prayer, divination and variety of herbal preparations Native American Indian War Dance

using only known therapeutic sources. Maori healing is predominantly delivered as a ceremony inclusive of incantation and song (Mark 2012). Ngangkari is the traditional name afforded those healers whose ancestral countries are within the Central Desert Region of Australia (Panzironi 2013). Traditional Aboriginal healing is not just a practice that continues in remote regions of the country, rather it is a practice that continues to be generationally passed down in coastal regions, irrespective of the cultural fragmentation that occurred due to colonisation (Panzironi 2013). As with traditional Maori healing practices, there is a limitation placed on Smoke for Healing the information that Aboriginal healers are able to share regarding their activities and methods, however for the most part, Ngangkari and Aboriginal Traditional Healing “consists of a complex and multilayered medical knowledge system that is passed down from generation to generation (Panzironi 2013, p. 23). Here traditional Aboriginal medical

knowledge informs a holistic repertoire of health related practices that

involve spiritual healing via touch, the use of medicinal plants and the

transposition of illness from the body into various objects, such as rocks

and sticks (Panzironi 2013). Within the context of Ngangkari practices,

more specifically, it is understood that healers are able to astral travel

and project their healing energies around those who are ill, via distant

healings (Panzironi 2013).

Ritualistically, Aboriginal traditional healing involves song and dance as

not only curative, but as an act of cultural maintenance towards the

prevention of ills (Panzironi 2013). Here, smoking ceremonies are Ceremonial Song

prominent, as Ngangkari and Aboriginal Healers alike, believe that the

purificational qualities inherent to the smoke of native leaves and small branches, realign the energies of ‘country’ (the earth/land) and cleanse the outer energies of people so that they may be more in harmony with their surrounds (Panzironi 2013). There is a mutable quality that occurs to an individual’s energies when they walk through the smoke and via this traditional ceremony the smoke can also reduce negative energies from within the environment, thus creating a ‘safe’cultural space for healing (Panzironi 2013). Smoke is also revered in a ritualistic sense as being the giver of life and so all respect is accorded the flame as though it were a living thing (Panzironi 2013). This ideal of the personification of the elements, is also true across both Maori and Native AmericanIndian cultures and also aligns with broader indigenous holistic existential ideals (Archibald 2006; Mark 2012; Panzironi 2013).

Smoke from Ceremony