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| April 2004 |
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Chilean
Stories: The Mapuche culture is animistic and highly complex. Any attempt on my part to summarise their approach to medicine in a short article such as this would be woefully inadequate. However my contact with the culture deepened my understanding of what it is for me to be a herbalist, and challenged my perspectives on some of the pressing contemporary issues for our profession. I visited Chile for a month to teach herbal medicine and learn about its place in Chilean life and particularly in the culture of an indigenous people there, the Mapuche. The Sociocultural Centre at the Catholic University of Temuco has been working with Mapuche communities for some years, and an aspect of their work has been to cooperate with Mapuche communities to find ways in which traditional Mapuche medicine can be practiced alongside modern biomedicine. To this end, a Diploma of Intercultural Health has been developed by the University in collaboration with local Mapuche communities and the Regional Health Service. I have working with the Centre, and have been responsible for the development and delivery of a unit within the course entitled 'Science and Tradition, aspects of herbal medicine'. In 2001, this unit was delivered in Temuco by Terri Nicholson, a recent graduate of the BNat from Southern Cross University, and myself. |
