A Medicine Warrior: Dr. David Baines

TC:  And that contributes to world peace.

DB:  Right. So we're totally opposite. So you can't tell a new diabetic that she has to change her diet. She's not going to, because it's going to affect the whole family. Unless you say, this diet is healthier for your family, and they're all at risk for getting diabetes, so this diet will help them not to develop it as fast. So you put it in as not to benefit her, but to benefit the family. So you have to use a totally different approach, and so the health information just has to be, you just can't take something off the shelf from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases and put Indian faces on there and hand it out to your patients.

TC:  So from what you're saying, this could partially account for what I consider the failure of diabetes prevention and treatment in some cases because the approach is usually individual.

DB:  Right, you can't do it that way. For us, the individual is supported by the family, which is supported by the tribe, which is supported by the earth. So without this support, you're nothing. So you are not the center of the universe, like in Western culture. We just have a totally different view of the creation.

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