Healing plants

Before there were "blogs", we at Biaraku had an ongoing forum of ideas that we distributed via email. I thought it would be a good idea to revisit some of the themes that we covered. Now there are even more resources on these subjects on the web.

Gina "Rixturey" Robles-Villalba

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HEALING PLANTS

Part of the Taino heritage to the world has been the addition of native healing plants to the pharmacopoeia of medicinal knowledge. Our abuelos and abuelitas always have used this knowledge to their benefit before the advent of modern science, hospitals, and pills.

Maria Dolores Hajosy Benedetti has written a wonderful book called "Earth and Spirit: Healing Lore and More from Puerto Rico" (©1989, Waterfront Press) that delves into this rich heritage from the point of view of the practitioners of popular and herbal medicine. Through interviews from all over the island, she brings together this tradition and systematically lists remedies for a number of ailments as well as list the English, Spanish, Latin and botanical names for the plants mentioned in the book. This book is available in English and Spanish.

This healing lore comes close to home, for we all can remember an abuelita or parent who made home remedies -- the guarapos and alcolados -- for a variety of ailments. To remedy a head cold, my father would make a guarapo of cloves, cinnamon, apples and lemons, sugar to taste, and to this mixture add a dash (or more) of rum.

On the web, TRAMIL is a project dedicated to the investigation of traditional popular medicines of the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the other islands in the Caribbean Basin. It was initiated through the efforts of enda-caribe, the Laboratory of Natural Substances of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacology, Port o Prince, Haiti, the Federación de Asociaciones Campesinas de Zambrana-Chacuey, República Dominicana, and the dispensary of SOE de Thomonde, Central de Haití. Their web site (in Spanish) is http://www.funredes.org/endacaribe/Tramil.html

Another book in English, "CARIBBEAN HERBS AND MEDICINAL PLANTS AND THEIR USES" edited by Kevin Harris & Mike Henry, takes a look at some of the herbs and medicinal plants found in the Caribbean, with advice on how to use them wisely, moderately and regularly, it also explores some of the myths and legends associated with these herbs and plants.

Aboriginals in Australia: Still the Worst Off

Aborigines still Australia's worst-off: report

By Rob Taylor
Reuters
Friday, June 1, 2007

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Aborigines are 13 times more likely than other Australians to go to prison, with poverty, unemployment and poor education behind a sharp jump in the number of indigenous jailings, a report said on Friday.

The rate of Aboriginal jailings rose 32 percent in the six years to 2006, while black youths were 23 times more likely to be detained after a brush with police and the courts, a government study of Aboriginal disadvantage said.

"Indigenous people are highly over-represented in the criminal justice system, as both young people and adults," said the report, the third in a series.

Australia's 460,000 Aborigines make up about 2 percent of the country's 20 million population. They are consistently the nation's most disadvantaged group, with far higher rates of unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence.

The report said wages for Aborigines had risen over the last decade and unemployment had halved. But median household incomes for Aborigines were still around half the level of other Australians and their life expectancy lagged by 17 years.

"If we are going to close the gap in life expectancy we will have to address the overcrowded housing and of course give young people the opportunity to get a job," opposition lawmaker Jenny Macklin told local radio.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said the report showed some encouraging signs and blamed an indigenous-run state agency -- axed by the government two years ago -- for many of the failings, as well Aborigines themselves.

"Let's be honest with ourselves and say a lot of this comes down to personal responsibility and people being responsible for their drug and alcohol behavior, the abuse they inflict on others," Brough told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government has often clashed with Aboriginal leaders, favoring practical measures such as better access to health and education.

Howard has repeatedly refused to apologize for past racial injustices suffered by the Aborigines.

Indigenous doctor Marlene Kong this week said Aboriginal Australians lived in "fourth-world" conditions and called for international aid agencies to step in, warning decades of government help had failed to overcome problems.

"It's been a critical situation for 30 years, and something needs to be done," the former Doctors Without Borders medic told New Scientist magazine.

"Infant and maternal mortality, two of the most important indicators of a population's health, are at least three times higher than for non-indigenous people, and getting worse."

Suriname: "New" Species Already Endangered

From the Associated Press, June 5 2007, an article on the "discovery" (one can be sure that the species are not new to the indigenous peoples of the area) of previously undocumented species of frog and insects in eastern Suriname. Having just been found by surveyors, they are almost immediately at risk, especially as the survey was done for mining companies, one of which, BHP is an Australian transnational corporation, with a woeful record of environmental destruction. Amerindians and Maroons of Suriname's interior, as the article notes, already suffer from poisonous contamination from mining, so the prospects for this "new" frog do not look too good.

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PARAMARIBO Suriname - A frog with fluorescent purple markings and 12 kinds of dung beetles were among two dozen new species discovered in the remote plateaus of eastern Suriname, scientists said Monday.

The expedition was sponsored by two mining companies hoping to excavate the area for bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, and it was unknown how the findings would affect their plans.

Scientists discovered the species during a 2005 expedition led by the U.S.-based nonprofit Conservation International in rainforests and swamps about 80 miles southeast of Paramaribo, the capital of the South American country, organization spokesman Tom Cohen said.

Among the species found were the atelopus frog, which has distinctive purple markings; six types of fish; 12 dung beetles, and one ant species, he said.

The scientists called for better conservation management in the unprotected, state-owned areas, where hunting and small-scale illegal mining is common.

The study was financed by Suriname Aluminum Company LLC and BHP Billiton Maatschappij Suriname. Suriname Aluminum, which has a government concession to explore gold in the area, will include the data in its environmental assessment study, said Haydi Berrenstein, a Conservation International official in Suriname, which borders Brazil, Guyana and French Guiana.

About 80 percent of Suriname is covered with dense rainforest. Thousands of Brazilians and Surinamese are believed to work in illegal gold mining, creating mercury pollution that has threatened the health of Amerindians and Maroons in Suriname's interior.

News from Australia

The last few weeks have seen a spate of articles in the Australian print media revolving around the 40th anniversary of Australia's decision to formally grant citizenship to its Aboriginal population, who had previously been controlled by various state legislative acts that classed them with the country's flora and fauna.

On the latter issue, see the Sydney Morning Herald, in an article titled, "When I was fauna: citizen's rallying call":

"LINDA BURNEY remembers her childhood well - those days when she was counted among the nation's wildlife. 'This is not ancient history,' says the state's [New South Wales] first Aboriginal minister. 'I was a child. It still staggers me that for the first 10 years of my life, I existed under the Flora and Fauna Act of NSW.' Then came the 1967 referendum, when Australians voted to extend full citizenship to Aborigines. Now, just days before the 40th anniversary of that vote, Ms Burney has described the referendum as a high tide in both the nation's history and her own - the moment when her status was elevated from fauna to citizen."

See especially: "Aborigines recall when Australia called them wildlife", by Michael Perry, Reuters, Thursday, May 24, 2007.

Other articles focused on the continued misery that dominates many remote and poor Aboriginal communities for whom "citizenship" entails a vague and increasingly irrelevant abstraction. A number of sources point out that in terms of health standards and life expectancy there are two Australias: one, a wealthier and whiter Australia with life expectancy mirroring that of nations of the G8, the second, an Aboriginal Australia with life expectancy rates mirroring those of the poorest nations of the "Third World." See the following article in The Australian: "Aborigines still off the map 40 years on," by Neil Sands, May 25, 2007.

Current Prime Minister John Howard, who has been in office for more than a decade is, according to some polls, leading his ruling coalition to what appears to be a landslide defeat by November of this year. Prime Minister Howard's administration has distinguished itself on numerous fronts, from alluding to Lebanese Australians as a violent community, to treating refugees fleeing the Taliban in pre-911 days as being mere "economic opportunists" (Australia later joined the US in invading Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban), to refusing to issue an apology for clear cases of genocide against Aboriginals in recent Australian history, and finally dismantling the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders Commission. Howard is getting his fair share of heckling by Aboriginals at major events--see in the Agence France Presse, Sunday, May 27, 2007, "Australian PM heckled on Aborigines."

As if to further pollute the situation of unsettled Aboriginal land tenure in Australia, despite some historic victories in the highest courts of the country, we also read about plans to turn some Aboriginal territory into a nuclear waste dump...and then to return it to Aboriginals two centuries from now. This resembles the case of Great Britain using parts of South Australia for testing nuclear bombs, with that land also later returned to its traditional ownwers. One can read more in The Australian, "Aboriginal land likely to be nuke waste dump," by Tara Ravens, May 25, 2007.

"Why is it so hard to say sorry?"--a good question, addressed in this article by Ursula Stephens on the Australian Eurekastreet website. Please read some of the commentary that follows the article, at the bottom of the page.

Australia is still grappling with racism and its deep colonial history, an ongoing history, in this settler state that in many parts was settled by Europeans only within the last 170 years. With the amount of negative attention directed towards the U.S., the Iraq war, and the many shortcomings of President Bush, it is very easy to overlook other situations where both the nature and consequences of current political leadership can be even more stark and grim. Canada, like Australia, also evades such critical attention.