Category: Stories
Date: 27 Jul 2009 10:34pm
Title: Tales of A Shaman's Apprentice
Inspirational stories from Tale's of a Shamans Apprentice
Seeing with a native's eyes
(In which the author learns to look at a garden in a whole new way.)
A bit further on, we came to the end of the trail. From the cover of the trees, we could see a huge swath of deforested land. As we looked out at the naked expanse, Kamainja snickered. "Pananakiri poy-deh-ken!" he said slowly. "White man dumb!"
Shafee poked him in the ribs to shush him, but giggled as he did so.
"What's so funny?" I asked quietly.
"Look at that garden," Kamainja whispered. "I've seen better-looking agriculture inside a leafcutter ant's nest!"
To my untrained eye, the peasant garden did not look all the different from Indian agriculture. Once Kamainja stopped laughing, I asked him to explain.
"Look at that manioc! It is planted too far apart. You saw how we put ours close together; the leaves form a canopy like the forest's, which keeps the sun and rain from directly hitting the soil. And they have only one kind, whereas in our gardens we have more than twenty. That plantation is an invitation for the bugs to move in."
Kamainja was right. Since the manioc plants were al lof one variety, insects that feed on that one variety might undergo a population explosion. I began to see what looked "primitive" to the two Indians.
"Look at the weeds!" Shafee chimed in.
"I don't see any," I said.
"Exactly! In our gardens, we always leave some behind because it binds the soil in the rainy season. That peasant's garden is probably cleaner than his house!"
"And another thing," said Kamainja. "You look at that plantation and you know the man doesn't understand the forest. A well-planned garden should look like a hole in the forest opened up when a giant ku-mah-kah tree falls over. Small openings in the forest are filled in fast by fast-growing weeky plants that attract game animals. When you cut down too much forest, the little plants can't seed in from the surrounding jungle and you don't have any birds or peccaries coming in that you can hunt."
"Besides," said Shafee, "this man put up fences at the edge of his garden. What a bad idea! Sometimes a peccary will come out the forest to steal a green banana or a bite of manioc from my plantations. When that happens, my children eat peccary meat for a week!" (p. 194)
Return to Kwamala
(Returning after 3 years with his research compiled into a book manuscript, he presents it to the Indians. This simple act of recognition of the value of their native culture sparks a revival of interest in maintaining the old knowledge and traditions.)
I not only wanted to visit old friends, I also had a debt to repay. During my first visit to the Tiriós in 1982, I had given the chief my solemn work that any medicinal plant knowledge I learned from the tribe would be returned to them in written form. This had been our agreement, yhet I did not know if the results of my studies would have any impact. The headman had made it clear during our first meeting that he regarded white man's medicine as superior to his own tribe's and he had never shown any interest in my research.
(Meeting old friends, he finds them surprisingly westernized, wearing manufactured clothes and speaking less of their native language than before.)
Koita and Kamainja waited for me at the entrance to the thatched hut. Inside sat the chief, wearing a Hawaiian print shirt and a pair of red cotton pants. I sat down on a low bench across from the chief; Koita and Kamainja sat on either side of me.
As was his wont, the cheif was inscrutable, saying nothing and betraying no emotion for the first few moments. Then he began: "We welcome you back to our village. I am pleased to see you cause us no trouble. Some of the people who have been here, mostly those working for the wildlife trader, have caused problems. They bring in liquor, tobacco, and marijuana, and then try to seduce our women. You have not done this and for that I thank you."
His appreciation pleased me, but being thanked for stupid things I hadn't done struct me as a backhanded compliment. I stood up and gave him a three-ring finder containing a two-hundred-page manuscript detailing everything I had learned about the medicinal plants of his tribe. Again showing no emotion, he accepted the binder and thanked me for living up to my end of the bargain. The next day, he called a meeting of all the Indians in the forest, a gathering to which I was not invited. I was a bit puzzled by that, but not concerned.
Afterward, Koita showed up at my hut. "Did you go to the meeting?" I asked.
"Chief said this information might be important in the future. He asked me to work with you and the old shamans to translate it inot our language. The information will then be used in the little schoolhouse set by the missionaries to teach our children."
A shaman's apprentice had been found! The traditional knowledge would now be passed on within the tribe, from shaman to apprentice, elder to student. No longer would it be necessary for a researcher from another land to preserve the tribal lore.
...
In an attempt to see whether the shaman's apprentice approach would be replicable, Conservation International sponsored a similar effort in 1991 among the Bribri Indians living in the village of Coroma, located in the foothills fo the Talamanca Mountains of southern Costa Rica. The project has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. Four shamans have chosen a class of four apprentices and a four-year training program is under way. More importantly, the effort has sparked a whole cultural revival in the sense that customs that were being allowed or even encouraged to die out are now being revived. The Indians have built a traditional thatched meeting house, the first ever seen by the youngest member of the tribe, who only knew the wooden houses in which they now live. And traditional dances are once again being performed.
(p. 273, 284-288)