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Geronimo Laughs
“You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.” – Navajo Saying
Native Americans had no cultural barriers against the adoption of horses, metal tools, and guns, nor did white settlers eschew corn or tobacco. Those things have tangible uses. However, partial incorporation of culture is less likely to be successful. The assumptions we inherit about nature and the world color every aspect of thought.
To try to mix and match western cultural presuppositions about math and science with antithetical cultural premises is likely to be a mess. Case in point is the Biden administration’s commitment to incorporating “indigenous knowledge” as this definitive policy memo explains:
[The official Guidance] reaffirms that Agencies should recognize and, as appropriate, apply Indigenous Knowledge in decision making, research, and policies across the Federal Government. This guidance is founded on the understanding that multiple lines of evidence or ways of knowing can lead to better-informed decision making. Agencies should use this guidance to develop an approach to Indigenous Knowledge that is appropriate for the contexts and legal frameworks in which they operate, the Tribes and Indigenous Peoples with whom they partner, and the communities that they serve.
Even for a government document, this 46-page memo is utterly spectacular with respect to its nebulosity, impracticality, and the sheer vagueness of the expected form and nature of the requisite “outreach” and “engagement.” I anxiously await the first court challenge to federal rulemaking when EPA decides to bag all those tiresome, math-heavy (and thus also patriarchal and white supremacist) chemical criteria to adopt a spiritual and wholistic approach to the Clean Air Act as recommended by a panel of elders.
It would be entirely rational to support scientific research to see what traditional practices and herbs proved to be efficacious and could thus be incorporated into modern medicine and beneficial supplements. But to dispense with science in favor of “other ways of knowing” invites a counterattack from that stubborn American cultural predilection for requiring proof and from a force far more dangerous than Custer’s command—the plaintiff’s malpractice bar.
The FDA and FTC quickly pounce on any and all label wording and advertising claims made for natural supplements that have no formal studies to support such claims. But if the makers claim that other forms of knowledge and other lines of evidence support the claims, is it then OK?
And what about COVID? Native American healing techniques against almost every European pathogen were more than just a tad ineffective given an overall mortality rate in excess of 90%. So, do we go with Tobacco, Cedar, Sage, sand Sweetgrass as an Rx? Heck, why not?! Can’t be any less effective than quarantine and masks. And the CDC will happily gin up data and guidance to support any position that is preferred by The Ruling Party.
And there’s this from The COVID-19 Tribal Resource Center:
The data shows how TIM [Traditional Indian Medicine] led to successful health outcomes because it dealt with the needs of Tribal patients when MWM [Modern Western Medicine] did not. The TIM integrated a Tribal belief system about illness that dealt with modalities relevant to the Tribe’s concept of illness which contributed to the eventual healing of Tribal patients.
What does “modalities relevant to the Tribe’s concept of illness” mean? The treatment will only work if the patient has the right concept of his illness? Imagine what Fauci or Gretchen Whitmer could do with a notion like mandating a particular and new concept of illness—and punishing wrongthink as evidenced by proscribed symptoms. You clearly did not follow the procedural and cognitive guidelines which is why you got infected.
There is no way that this policy approach is not completely nuts. Like large fat men joining sororities, politicized weather reports, and the lunacy of pro-crime law enforcement it all seems like a big assault on common sense. “Gaslighting” is no longer a strong enough word.
Published in General
Say what???
You are absolutely correct: This is just lunacy!
Great. Will they try a ghost dance to protect them from bullets instead of body armor?
Once again they prove that science and a rational approach to issues in this country are not interesting. It’s so much more entertaining to think about the use of Indian dances and rituals! Right ….
Aside from the failed healing against flu, smallpox etc., recall that Sitting Bull promoted the Ghost Dance thing such that strong medicine would prevent bullets from penetrating… Similarly, a big medicine pre-battle pep talk usually had unfortunate results as discussed in this post:
It’s all about science, until it’s not about science. Psychology is more of an art form than science. Polio vaccine is about science.
There is a big difference between seeing the world as it is and seeing the world as you wish it to be. I’m reminded of the young man in Alaska who wanted to become one with the bears. He did become one with the bears, in bite sized digestible chunks.
I wonder if the
InjunsNative AmericansIndigenous Peoples have a dance to preventGlobal CoolingGlobal WarmingClimate Change? If so, it’d be a lot cheaper and a lot less damaging to our economy and what’s left of our fragile freedoms than what the Left wants to do about this hoax.Considering that less than 50% of psychological studies can be replicated (and replication is the cornerstone of science), it most certainly is not a science of any kind.
This sort of thing necessarily follows from the modern objection to “racism,” doesn’t it?
It seems to me that the idea of “racism” has been applied not only to racial background, but also to culture. Disliking or otherwise objecting to someone else’s culture is regularly called “racist.” Even if one were to use more precise language, it would be termed “xenophobic,” which would be more accurate, though probably not in attributing the objection solely to fear.
This is modern non-judgmentalism. It is even inherent in the modern application of the idea of “freedom of religion,” which extends beyond merely permitting others to practice or believe as they wish, to preventing criticism of other religions. I’m regularly accused of being a bigot or anti-Semite for disapproving Catholicism or Judaism, for example.
So, if you can’t criticize the culture or beliefs of others, then you have to accept them. This is the necessary condition of living in a “diverse and pluralistic society,” which is supposedly such a great thing.
I don’t like it either. The problem, though, goes much deeper than one silly policy, I think. The problem is inherent in the very ideas of individualism, liberalism, and toleration.
It used to be the people were sensible enough to generally keep cultures separate, except when a more dominant culture was seeking to assimilate another. Since roughly the 1930s, based on propaganda initially adopted for anti-Axis war purposes — Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia, specifically — the idea of one culture dominating another has been forbidden. It was a particularly absurd and hypocritical position to be adopted by the British and Americans, the most successful dominant cultures of the preceding century or so.
Under this new moral viewpoint, defending or even preferring one’s own culture is considered wicked. Virtue is demonstrated by allowing immigration of large populations from diverse, incompatible cultures, and accommodating them. It does seem to be a recipe for cultural suicide on the part of people of white European ancestry.
My impression is that this viewpoint is fostered by an astonishing ignorance of other cultures, and a counterfactual belief that, as Stevie and Paul once sang, “people are the same wherever you go.”
As I recall, this is detailed quite well in the first chapter or two of Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. Though as I also recall, he didn’t actually have a solution, as I don’t think that he was religious.
Old,
Triple Like!
It was a refreshing pleasure to read a dialog of such exceptionally high quality. It is a blessing that Ricochet has Members like you who are willing and able to offer articles this good.
(I agree with the factual premises, and thus the conclusion, but that’s irrelevant to my point.)
Wonderful.
Much of what has been needed to have happen with regards to a respect for “indigenous knowledge” has already been worked out by decisions made locally.
Having a monstrous Fed government, which by now could well have deputized over 24 DEI agents for every other position in our society, is only going to further destroy us from within.
Medical people in the Southwest have routinely over the last 2 decades allowed for patients in their care of a Navajo or Hopi background to have one of their healers, or one of their high priests, come into the hospital and perform religious and/or healing rituals.
People work things out on their own far better than when there is government intrusion.
It also becomes legally costly when any one group can take some medical or educational system or employer to court because their “cultural instincts” have not been respected enough.
I think of the one Afr American woman who was fired for continually being late for work. The NYC legal system allowed for a jury to find the employer guilty and then a multi million dollar settlement was awarded to her. (This was in the news a couple of weeks ago.)
I also tried to watch a murder mystery drama on Britbox. It took place in Scotland and the chief detective was a lesbian.
Just as it seemed that the plot would be going off into the expected direction of solving a murder, the chief of police assigned the gay woman to head the case.
The story line then devolved into how she had a right to consult with her wife before being degraded by having to agree to spend so much time on actually working for her police department.
So there you have it: women and gays have demanded equal treatment, but even after being given a plum assignment, now they feel they are being insulted!!
So they’re Republicans then.
Only if the makers are indigenous. Or at least genuflect in that direction while shoveling money at Democrats.
I commend to you Dead Loch on Amazon Prime as a palate cleanser.
2 points for not commending her to it.
Hold please. Thinking…thinking…
“Like large fat men joining sororities”
I can join a sorority? SWEET!
We do. It’s called “Dance of the Solicit Gov’t For Grant Money…..Dance”.
Looks like we are expected to (ghost) dance the fine line between avoiding racism and cultural appropriation.
Is it safe to presume that Senator Warren and her staff made a significant contribution to the drafting of this memo?
Big wampum.
White Woman With CheekBones /Fauxcohantas is part of the legislative tribe. The doc originated in the executive. Little known fact: Joe Biden is part Native American and was in fact raised in the only Navajo hogan in Delaware. Affectionately known as Demented Weasel, he was the best bow hunter in the entire Slime Lizard clan.
Can I tell everyone who asks me why I’m not wearing a mask that I’m using Indigenous Medicine?
Can America commit to fighting climate change soley with indigenous ghost-dances and whatnot?
If so…?
We’ve gone through all this back when Alternative Medicine was a thing. I’ve always found it fascinating that the same “patients” will happily use all the alternatives (anything but “allopathic!”) even though homeopathy, herbal medicine and acupuncture have completely different and often violently conflicting theories of the body and disease.
No, then it would be a very, very strongly worded letter.