Traditional and Modern Healers Bridge Differences in Native Communities
Native communities used to turn to traditional healers when they were
sick or injured. Now the medical world is finding ways to blend modern medicine
with traditional medicine.
Charles Scribe has helped thousands of people to heal since he became a
medicine man in 1993. As a medicine man, he often works with conventional
doctors, sending patients to clinics for medical tests and surgery.
Scribe says all of us would benefit if more doctors were familiar with
traditional healing. Doctors would apprentice with traditional healers. This
rarely happens, but some doctors, like the ones Scribe works with, do work
with traditional healers when treating native patients.
Scribe had always been interested in the traditional ways of his native
people. But it was a gathering of native leaders from across North America
that set him on the path to becoming a medicine man. A multi-faith conference
on a native reserve in the early 1970s sparked an interest that still burns
brightly.
Scribe's father is Cree while his mother is Sioux and Assiniboine. He and
his wife run a healing center that has helped thousands of people over the
years.
To become a medicine man, he had to apprentice for six or seven years,
learning the ancient healing arts from traditional healers. Scribe was about
40 when he finished his apprenticeship and became a medicine man. Apprenticing
involves learning how to treat all four areas of a person's well-being: the
physical, emotional, spiritual and mental.
Since finishing his apprenticeship, much of Scribe's work has been with
people who experienced trauma and abuse as children in residential schools.
Their experiences as children have led to various physical as well as psychological
illnesses.
"They were having difficulty getting help from conventional clinics," Scribe
adds. "They were having trouble finding answers or getting wellness. It turned
out that the reason was they were damaged psychologically as children, and
standard medicine couldn't deal with it. They were carrying deep-rooted issues."
Scribe has many concerns with modern medicine. He thinks conventional medicine
has moved too far away from natural remedies and it doesn't deal with the
whole person.
Dr. Marcia Anderson is president of a native physician's association. She
doesn't know of any doctors who have apprenticed with a traditional healer,
but she says some doctors are learning about traditional healing.
"I know of a few people who are trained in western allopathic (conventional)
medicine and have knowledge, or are seeking to gain knowledge, of traditional
medicine as well," says Anderson.
"I don't believe it's common, and there may be multiple reasons for this,
including the enormous time commitment western medical training demands, which
limits the opportunities to be in [the] community apprenticing with indigenous
(native) healers."
Anderson says she knows some doctors who are very comfortable working with
traditional healers, while others are not. "I believe these collaborations
can be very valuable in assisting the provision of culturally competent care
to aboriginal patients," Anderson says. She adds that this is her personal
view and not necessarily the official position of her association.
"I see value in indigenous healing practices, as they have existed for
thousands of years and can be effective," Anderson says. "If people can learn
both, this could be valuable. But I recognize that it might be hard to make
the time to learn both."
Part of the reason traditional medicine doesn't play a bigger role in health
care might be the fact that there are so few doctors of native descent.
"There is an urgent need to train more indigenous physicians," says Anderson.
"Indigenous people are vastly under-represented in the medical profession."
Medical schools are working to address this imbalance.
"I believe there are reasons to be optimistic about the potential to increase
the number of indigenous physicians," says Anderson, who is Cree-Saulteaux.
"It is vitally important to remember that more needs to be done than just
increasing the number of [indigenous] students in the medical schools," Anderson
says.
"We need to ensure there are adequate supports to assist their successful
progression through medical school, given some of the extra burdens like financial
pressures or discrimination.
"Also, the medical schools need to provide a culturally safe environment,
and implement curriculum in aboriginal health that seeks to ensure all medical
students graduate with a minimum level of cultural competency."
Another way for doctors' offices to have more cultural competence is to
have more medical staff from Native American communities. One source of such
staff is the physician assistant program at A.T. Still University, which has
a special track for American Indian, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians.
Physician assistants (PAs) differ from the medical assistant who takes
your blood pressure at your doctor’s office. PAs are generalists who are
trained like physicians.
Their work includes questioning patients about their medical histories,
performing exams, diagnosing, writing prescriptions, ordering and interpreting
lab tests, assisting in surgery and counseling patients. They do all of the
things that a physician does if it's not a complicated case.
The PA, if he or she is a Native American, can provide an important cultural
bridge for a non-native physician treating a native patient.
"If there's an Indian grandma and she goes to the medical office and she
sees somebody who looks like her, or looks like her grandchild, and that treats
her politely in ways that make sense to her, then there's already a baseline
of understanding," says Cynthia Yahola Wilson. She's director of the Native
American Physician Assistant (NAPA) Track.
"The body, mind and spirit have to be attended to," Wilson adds. "Although
we're teaching the students medicine in western medicine ways, we try to teach
them to provide help them provide culturally competent health care."
Wilson says that most Native American communities are medically underserved.
High turnover is part of the problem.
"We're looking for somebody 'who has a dog in the fight,' which means that
we want people who are invested in Indian communities," says Wilson.
"We're looking for Indian people who want to come work in a clinic [and]
will stay there, because there are a lot of medical people who work at IHS
(Indian Health Services) or other underserved areas to get loan repayments,
to pay off the big medical school bills that they have. They work for the
government for underserved areas, but they only do it for a short time."
As a result of this turnover, Wilson says, there's not a lot of continuity
of care in underserved communities. Medical professionals come and go. This
makes it hard for patients and doctors to build trust and rapport, and for
doctors to learn about cultural differences.
"In medicine, one of the key elements is communication, how well people
understand each other, and how well the provider can help the patient to bring
forward all kinds of resources to help themselves heal," says Wilson.
"Part of that is about connection and communication, and being able to
trust and have faith in your provider."
Links
Association of American Indian Physicians
Professional association for native physicians
Association of Native American Medical Students
Provides support and advocacy for medical students
Arizona School of Health Sciences -- Native American Physician Assistant
Track
Learn about the physician assistant program
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