Ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin, Links Rain Forests, Cultures and Kids
4/30/98
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Title: Ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin, Links Rain Forests, Cultures and Kids
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/30/98
Byline: Barbara Novovitch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Western science often scoffs at shamans, the medicine
men of indigenous tribes of Amazonia, but scientist and author Mark Plotkin has
personal knowledge of their wisdom -- and now he is passing it on to children,
even the children of those Indian tribes.
Pupils in the Tirio Indian tribe in Suriname are using his latest book, ``The
Shaman's Apprentice,'' as a botany handbook, reading about themselves and
learning about the healing arts of their ancient shamans.
Western science tends to denigrate as mumbo-jumbo what it cannot explain,
Plotkin said in an interview with Reuters. But he recalled the time when he was
searching for treatments for diabetes in the rain forest. One shaman who told
him he did not know of any later dreamed about a tree whose bark could be used
and gave Plotkin directions to find it.
``This man is crippled, there's no way he's ever been up that trail,'' which
was miles down the river and up paths the shaman had never traveled, the
ethnobotanist said.
But he said the Western scientists who dismiss such stories accept that Sir
Humphrey Davy, the discoverer of benzene, had a dream in which he saw snakes
chasing each other in circles.
``He woke up and he said, 'Eureka, benzene is a ring!' Which indeed it is.
These types of things happen across the board in cultures that we can't
explain, and that's our own ignorance.''
Plotkin said he wants ``to marry the ancient wisdom of the shamans to the 21st
century,'' and his children's book is another step toward that goal. The
bearded, 42-year-old scientist has spent much of the last two decades in the
South American rain forest, living with Indian tribes and learning
from their shamans.
RAIN FOREST'S POTENTIAL PHARMACEUTICAL RICHES
His first book, ``Tales of A Shaman's Apprentice,'' awakened Western readers to
potential pharmaceutical riches in the fast-disappearing rain forest. It has
gone through 14 printings and been translated into Dutch, German, Italian and
Spanish, and a Japanese edition will be available later this year.
The book made him a semi-celebrity -- lectures in the United States and abroad,
the requisite photo story in People magazine, receipt of the Conservation Medal
from the Zoological Society of San Diego.
He has also become a one-man environmental conglomerate -- executive director
of the Ethnobiology and Conservation Team (ECT), a nongovernmental organization
engaged in rain forest projects; a consultant for Shaman's Pharmaceuticals;
writer, lecturer and principal actor in the Academy Award-nominated IMAX
documentary ``Amazon,'' and research associate at the Smithsonian Institute.
His second book retells a true story from the first. It is a collaboration with
author-illustrator Lynne Cherry, whose ``The Great Kapok Tree'' is a children's
classic. Her ``Gauguinesque'' illustrations are so exact that Tirio children
can identify the plants in their own back yard, Plotkin said.
``Every one of these is a true, botanically correct medicine plant used by the
Tirios. ... This is their plants and their forest in color. This is a
validation of their own culture.''
In addition, the book teaches ``family values'' -- respect your elders, learn
from the old ways, cultural and biological diversity have value. ``Why not
marry these things?'' he asked. ''We all gotta breathe the air, drink the
water. We need medicines when we get sick. Why politicize the environment?''
EXPLOITING 20TH CENTURY TECHNOLOGY
Plotkin believes in exploiting 20th century technology for conservation --
acquainting indigenous tribes in the rain forest with laptop computers and the
global positioning system so they can map their own territory. The ECT, for
example, puts its annual report and articles by and about its biologists,
conservationists and anthropologists on the World Wide Web
(http://www.ethnobotany.org).
Plotkin and the ECT have set up Shaman's Apprentice programs with the Tirios in
Suriname, the Inganos in Colombia, the Guaymis in Costa Rica and the Seris in
Mexico.
Sometimes the medicine men are not eager to share their knowledge with
foreigners, Plotkin said, but they may pass it on to their own people. The ECT
acts as a catalyst, providing initial training, notebooks and laptops so that
indigenous communities can codify and disseminate traditional wisdom.
The Maroons (Bushnegroes) of Suriname asked ECT to help them set up a program;
now they are building a site for ecotourism at Tonka Island.
Although the baby boomers of the late 20th century are eager to mix the
centuries-old healing methods of the shamans with Western medicine, the medical
establishment until recently has fought it.
``The people who run the medical establishment came of age during the
antibiotic revolution, a generation ago, so they equate healing with chemistry.
They don't understand all the spiritual stuff. Now the young folks ... are
interested in visualization, massage therapy, hypnosis, and all those things
that are purely shamanic techniques,'' Plotkin said.
``It's not a question of 'You get the antibiotics' or 'You get the prayer for
healing' -- you combine the two. Alternative healing should be complementary
(to Western medicine) -- that's common sense, not rocket science. We didn't
understand how aspirin worked in the human body until relatively recently. Do
you think we should have stopped taking aspirin for a headache for 100 years
until we figured it out?''
Most people do not realize how miserable life can become when the environment
is neglected, Plotkin said. For example, most news reports about Rwanda and
Haiti, the most degraded countries environmentally in Africa and the Western
Hemisphere, did not mention environment as a cause for their woes.
``But when you have overpopulation, maldistribution of resources and
environmental degradation it's a recipe for disaster. That means our soldiers
and our tax dollars being put in harm's way ... and it was because of the
environment.''