Native Knowledge Defended
There were young people who started to die from
respiratory failure and doctors didn’t know why. They went to the
closest reserve to those hospitals. It was a Navajo, Dine, reserve and
the Medicine man said that when there’s lots of rain and then drought
and a certain flower shows up earlier on trees, then young people have
to move up to the plains or they will die. Researchers then found out
that it was a virus that thrives in rat urine. When lots of rain falls
rats go out of burrows not to drown. They urinate on the surface. When
rains stop the virus is there in the ground. When it is summer and dry
and dusty winds blow, then the virus goes in the air. It attacks young
people’s lung tissue. It doesn’t attack children's lung tissue nor older
people’s lung tissue. Poison ivy is like that, it doesn’t affect young
children and the old besides are immune to it. How did the Medicine man know? Well it is his duty in
his community to know these things and this is knowledge from ancestors
accumulated over millennia. There’s people who would say that the Dine
(Navajo) healer knew because some spirits came and told him and so on.
Most people in general are not in favor of that kind of talk. People who practice Wiccan beliefs and calling of some sort of spirits enjoy that kind of
talk. There’s Muslims who do and say similar things. One African
Muslim said he writes Ayatu l Kursi on paper, burns it and mixes with
water. Then he drinks it and arrows can’t hurt him. Yet France occupied
their lands and stopped them from Hajj and they couldn’t do anything
about it until other Muslims who didn't practice that sort of thing went
to Jihad and threw the French out.
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There is a spiritual effect to
everything. It’s from the Creator Almighty. It is His Will and
usually punishment or a test of patience for us. That is far from
sorcery and spirit worship and praying to Sedna. In Inuit culture Sedna
was a girl that died a terrible death drowning. People said she became a
daemon of the water and when they would go out to catch fish or seal
they prayed to her asking her for help. If we keep things simple
knowing that there’s a Creator and He has Prophets, then we accepted
what Islam asks us to accept and that makes us Muslim. We should
acknowledge the built up knowledge of the land and people and creatures
on it that is passed down by the story tellers because it’s knowledge of
things that happened and truth is accepted from whoever says it. These
stories tell how people lived and died, how they treated diseases and
made medicines from plants, how mountains grew, how lakes were formed
and how rivers began to flow. It's a treasure of records that is
accumulated over tens of thousands of years. If a non Muslim says "don’t
steal" it’s true and you say "he’s a kafir who cares go on
steal". A French man came to a Muslim country and he said he
accepted Islam, then he became an imam in a mosque. After a few years he
left and sent a letter from France saying he was never Muslim and was
abusive in his letter. The Muslims replied that it was a weight on them to have
someone stay in the mosque and conduct prayers for the public and that
he took that burden and fulfilled it and they thanked him. As for him not
being Muslim, they told him that it’s between him and Allah; something
he will deal with alone with Allah in the Hereafter. If we are not
worried about a munfik being an imam in a mosque and listening to his
Khutbas in Juma, then if a nonMuslim comes to us telling us reasonable
things, if they are true we don’t dismiss them.
If an indigenous Indonesian
nonMuslim Kubu man comes from the forest to tell the Indonesian Muslims
not to cut down the forest and not to kill orangutans, there is no
reason not to listen to him. As a matter of fact we should side with the
Kubu, because what he is saying is true and what Muslim lumber companies
cutting down trees recklessly are doing is not right. In 2006 the
indonesians-malaysians killed and displaced an estimate of 4-5000 orangutans in Borneo considering the
animal a pest. They burn, and slash the rainforest. They say falsehood
about wildlife. Muslims from other countries are not helpful and
they do the same, like the Egyptian who said they have tigers in the
desert in Egypt, or the Pakistanis that said they killed a monster and
then they understood it was an endangered species of a crocodile when
someone said timsah meaning crocodile in Arabic and it is in the Qur’an
in the place where Musa Aleyhi Salaam is mentioned. We need to listen to
indigenous folks in matters dealing with environmental destruction. A
solution that they propose is better than the decision of Muslim
folks to turn forests into deserts. Indigenous people have more
knowledge and wisdom in this matter, because they specialize in it. It’s
the same as the Europeans possession of knowledge of space
technology being far advanced from that of Muslims.
If we keep the wisdoms with us
from the Native culture and at the same time stay connected to the
Creator, such asking the Creator for a good fishing rather then Sedna,
then we kept our bond with our Creator. There is nothing wrong in
preserving what the Native culture has to offer about the
knowledge and wisdom of the land, animals and people.
The healing that is done by
Medicine men that is psychotherapy and medicinal treatment is not
sorcery and it has nothing to do with religious practices in the first
place. The healers don’t talk about ideology but instead about
psychology. Psychological and medicinal therapy is something that is
separate from ideological beliefs and religious orientation.
Unfortunately some people call the healing process an ideological
one and if they think it is something good they go into their imaginary
worlds, some go as far as to make themselves healers that heal with
mystical powers. If however they opposite it, then they start calling
the healers heretics and want to convert them to cross worship in case
of church people or to Islam in case of Muslims. This can be confusing
if the healer they consider an infidel is already in the fold of their
religion.