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Features
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Native American Healer Bridges Two Worlds
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By Miles White |
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Native American medicine comprises the knowledge of many different tribes and nations in North and South America accumulated over centuries. Much about these sacred spiritual practices have been passed down and preserved through oral traditions. Native American medicine is still practiced by hundreds of tribes extending over thousands of miles, and is a healing tradition difficult to fully comprehend outside of its varied cultures and ritual ceremonies. Similarities in approach can be seen across various tribes. Many, for example, use sweatlodges and smudging, honor the Four Directions and have an understanding that healing is based in spirit. There are also clear differences between tribal practices, and each tribal nation has its own unique ceremonies, like the Lakota Sundance or the Navajo Fire Dance. Medicine ways may change to fit the needs of a specific region as well as the medicinal properties of those plants native to that region. Even the approach of various practitioners within one tribe can differ significantly. One of the trends to emerge in recent years finds the blending of Native American traditional practices and Western healing approaches, often by Indian physicians whose knowledge bridge both worlds. |
Dr. Terry Maresca |
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Dr. Terry Maresca, a Mohawk Indian who trained in Western medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, represents a new kind of Native American healer. Her training as a physician allows her to bring the best of the scientific method, modern diagnostic tools and healing technologies to her healing practice, while her knowledge of Indian ways and medicinal plants brings the wisdom of her culture to the process. But she would not call herself a traditional healer. "I think it's important to point out that there is a big difference between an American Indian or Alaska Native physician who's been trained in a Western way versus what I could call a traditional healer," she says. "They’re not the same. I think there's some confusion about that."
Western-trained Indian doctors would not call themselves traditional healers, she says, even though they are versed in their own cultural practices and serve their own communities. The difference is in the path they have taken. Physicians go to college and medical school, develop a specialty and use scientific method. Traditional healers are most likely chosen by their community for any number of reasons, including family background or personal experiences. Their approach to healing is rooted in culturally informed spiritual and ceremonial practices, and based on a holistic view of the human being. Training is usually done one-on-one, passed down by word of mouth in a time-honored tradition. "Traditional healers are learning in a much older way; they’re not learning from books. They’re not sitting in lecture halls," says Dr. Maresca, who was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island. “They’re really learning on a one on one basis, and it’s basically an apprenticeship of sorts. That may take a long period of time. And that also assumes they’re pretty well versed in their culture and language so they can learn the things they need to learn." Despite the difference in approaches, she sees a healthy respect by Western-trained physicians for what traditional healers do. Often, both kinds of healers will work in tandem to find the right treatment options for a patient, stressing a collaborative approach. The Association of American Indian Physicians, of which she is a longtime member, has long supported this hybrid pathway to healing, she says. "The Western physicians that I know have a great appreciation for what traditional healers do, and we really see them as colleagues," Dr. Maresca says. "They’re on the same level, and maybe notches above us on some level, because the community chose them, and has respect for them. They can do things that I can’t do, and I may be able to do some things they can’t do." Native American medicine takes all aspects of one's inner self, lifestyle, emotions, social setting, as well as their natural surroundings into consideration during the healing process. The patient is always a partner in the path towards balance and healing, and many remedies make use of natural plants and medicinal herbs that have been a part of Indian healing practices for thousands of years. Dr. Maresca, who has a background in herbal medicine and gardening, has been instrumental in helping the Snoqualmie Tribe of Washington preserve the sacred knowledge of its plant ways by developing a medicinal garden at its community clinic in Carnation, Washington. The organic garden is intended to promote an appreciation for the role of herbal medicine in contemporary health care and help advance the tribe’s mission to provide holistic health care services to the broader community. It also helps the tribe to bring culturally appropriate health care to Indian patients. "I think what makes this unique is that it's actually part of a clinic," she says. "The obvious linkage of a traditional approach and a western approach is right there." At the Tolt Community Clinic, Dr. Maresca practices a combination of Western-based family medicine and traditional healing that educates people about how to gather, prepare and use medicinal plants. The clinic opened in 2002 and Dr. Maresca was hired by the tribe to help restore the wisdom of plant medicine to its cultural practices. "In the same way that you get a prescription, there may be something that's in that garden that actually could do just as well for you, so the tribe allowed a lot of latitude for me to choose what would be in there, that could illustrate those points," she says. Then, remembering the words of one of her Mohawk elders who was also an herbalist, she adds: "These medicines are still here, but if we don't use them, they're going to go away."
The garden is divided into zones representing plants used during each of the four life cycles: birth and infancy, youth, adult, and elders. It contains caffeine-free herbal teas and medicinal plants used by American Indian tribes and some from other cultures. Eventually, the garden will hold between 30 and 40 different types of plants along with stone and tile artwork, a "living wall" featuring native plants and berries, and benches made of Cedar and Douglas Fir. There is also a memorial garden dedicated to "Grandma" Dwenar Forgue, a revered Snoqualmie herbalist and healer who left a legacy of numerous home remedies when she died in 1983 at the age of 85. |
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"From a traditional concept, from that way of thinking, I can never charge somebody for that," she says. "You can’t buy that knowledge, so I’m not going to sell that either. I'm not going to say 'that'll be five bucks, here's your cream.' People can find another way to honor that. What I choose to share is the common knowledge of the women of my tribe, and it rightfully belongs to the people." |
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Since different tribes may have different uses of the same plant, what would be common knowledge among Mohawk people, for example, may not be common knowledge for the Snoqualmie, even though they may use the same plant. Tribes often have their own special remedies or formulas, she says, which may or may not be shared. She is critical of large drug companies who go into Native peoples' communities, particularly in South America, and appropriate ownership of tribal medicinal remedies to turn huge profits in the marketplace. "There are clearly different plants and formulas that tribal people use that's theirs, that belongs to them," she says. "For pharmaceutical companies to put that into a proprietary formula from a Western standpoint is really seen as a violation of intellectual property rights of tribes." The Snoqualmie people believe that the establishment of the medicinal herb garden at the clinic will promote better understanding of the tribe's history, the continued existence of the Snoqualmie people and the regional plants it uses in healing and the need to protect and promote natural habitat. The tribe also hopes to encourage its patients to blend Western medicine with Native beliefs and cultural traditions. "The mission of the project has to do with inclusiveness with the Native and non-Native community, and with Western and non-Western says," says Dr. Maresca. "They felt the herbal garden was one step in that direction. This will all go back to the community as we harvest these plants. I'm just a caretaker."
Besides her practice at the Tolt Community Clinic, Dr. Maresca teaches family medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. The medical training program there is unique she says, since it has what she considers the best program in the country to train doctors to work with Indian patients. That training includes spending time with traditional healers in tribal communities and gaining experience with native healing practices so that students become more cultural competent in Indian ways. "They may know what to do in a clinic setting, but they may not really know what happens when people go through ceremony for the same issue," Dr. Maresca says of the students who go through the school’s Indian Health Pathway program. "They get to see a different diagnostic process and a different healing process. So I think this school is really ahead of the game. There are others who offer a clerkship, but nobody has such a full curriculum as the University of Washington." Dr. Maresca is critical of the trend in recent years where practitioners of New Age therapies have adopted Native American healing practices, detaching them from their cultural groundings. It saddens her to see Indian healing rituals like sweat lodges performed by non-Indians and offered for profit, and she feels it detracts from the work of authentic Indian healers who work in time-honored ways. "I don't think it's a good thing," she says. "I think it’s dangerous to the individuals who run those, I think it's dangerous for the people who attend those, I think it's dangerous to the cultures who are having their ways not respected." Many Indians believe that the secrets and practices of tribes should not be shared with non-Indians, while others take the view that healing should be offered to anyone who asks. The issue is "a tough one in our communities right now," she says. Ultimately, she believes it is for traditional healers to decide, since "they have teachings in terms of what is allowed to be shared and maybe what needs to stay in a sacred way, and not be shared." It is perhaps symptomatic of modern society's yearning for spiritual healing, she speculates, that many have gravitated towards Native American healing practices and spirituality. On the one hand, she understands the need for human beings to seek the thing that will make them whole, but she is not convinced that traditional Indian ways have the answer to cure all of society's ills. "I think that there are some that for whatever reason think that Native culture has the magic bullet for that and I'm not so sure
that we do," she says, "but what I do know is that I think our people have survived because we've been able to combine our spirituality with a real
sense of place and connection to land and to the people of our community, and there are a lot of people who don't have that."
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Dr. Maresca takes what her own tribal traditions have taught her and compares that to Pacific Northwest herbal
knowledge, often fusing the two, so she considers that she is still learning a lot about medicinal herbs and their uses. She keeps samples of dried
plants, roots and creams that she has created in her office that she might suggest to others as treatments, but does not charge money for her herbal
healing work.All Rights Reserved.