Salish & Sohaptian Cultures, Foods and Medicine in Southwest Canada and the United States of America

 
    
Traditional Foods and Medicines for good health

  
Indigenous peoples’ Diabetes Prevention and Management
  
   
 

A Professional Development Seminar

  

When:  
June 24, 2002

  

Where: Nisqually Indian Reservation - Washington State
        

Cost:  $125.00 (USD) (payment must be received before registration is complete.)

Registration limit: 45
   
The Salish & Sohaptian Cultures, Foods and Medicine workshop brings together community members, students,  traditional healers, health practitioners, health educators, traditional foods chefs and herbalists to share knowledge and wisdom used for promoting balanced health and prevention of chronic disease.  This is a one-day Professional Development seminar designed to reinforce current knowledge and build toward more advanced programmatic, clinical and community organizational approaches to preventing and treating diabetes and associated preventable diseases.  We shall:

>  EXAMINE closer the use of blood-type and metabolic typing approaches to preventing disease through appropriate choices of foods and nutrients according to individual body requirements.

> FORMULATE strategies for intra-organ- izational cooperation and mutual support and networking.

>FOCUS on the development of a personal, family and community action planning for better health with appropriate introduced foods and natural foods and medicines.

> PROVIDE materials for use in designing, conducting and evaluating community education activities.

> SHARE a meal and recipes (each person is invited to bring to the workshop a recipe for a dish using natural Salish or Sahaptian foods to consider for proposed inclusion in the Salish & Sahaptian cook book - including historical use information and reason for design of the dish. The cook book will be published by the CWIS DayKeeper Press.)

The one-day program will be conducted at the Nisqually Indian Reservation - 15 minutes east of Olympia, Washington June 24, 2002
   

 Presenters:

Dr. Leslie E. Korn, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Center for Traditional Medicine

Rudolph C. Ryser, Ph.D., Cowlitz

Center for World Indigenous Studies

Margee Thompson, Nisqually

 

 

Venue: Nisqually Senior Center

 

Hotel information provided with directions.

 
Diabetes is receiving a great deal of attention among native and non-native peoples in the western hemisphere but little attention is paid to the role of traditional foods and medicine for prevention and management. Diabetes constitutes an epidemic among Native peoples throughout North America, in Mexico, Central America and South America where in some nations upwards to 80% of tribal members have sugar metabolism dysfunction.  Where indigenous peoples continue to practice traditional diets, there is virtually no diabetes. The devastating effect on personal health and culture of diabetes or glucose intolerance syndromes on native peoples is now being experienced among peoples of European origin.
   
Diabetes is a metabolic dis-order emblematic of the physical social, psychological and spiritual disruption of the “metabolism” of daily life among many native peoples. Refined foods such as flour and sugar, canned foods that are denatured, a sedentary lifestyle and stress has produced profound disruption to healthy bodies and minds of Fourth World people, resulting in an epidemiology of pathological conditions leading to early mortality, disability, and dysfunction. The sweet taste of “bear candy”, wild carrots, salmon berries, and huckleberries represented among many Salish and Sohaptan peoples has been lost to many of the current and future generations of native people who suffer from the chronic intergenerational stresses and traumas endemic in native communities – most graphically seen in the epidemic that is diabetes.
  
The role of stress, the metropolitan diet and the lack of physical exercise are increasingly recognized as central causative factors to this thoroughly preventable disease. Research suggests that authentic foods and medicines bring balance to the body, mind and spirit.  Health practitioners and native peoples living on reserves and in urban communities, however, frequently do not generally turn to traditional foods and medicines nor do they necessarily possess the knowledge to make appropriate diet changes.
  
There are over 1500 plants with hypoglycemic and anti-diabetic properties—many of them indigenous to the North American continent and specifically the Salish and Sohaptan territories.
  
Our seminar uses an approach focusing on the kitchen, food selection, preparation techniques, nutrition, the appropriate use of supplements, stress reduction and specialized massage techniques to enhance circulation in people with diabetes or individuals susceptible to diabetes. We address research on the role of blood type, metabolism typing and digestion/assimilation. Each participant will have the opportunity to learn her/his blood type and to take measurement of one's blood glucose levels. We also discuss how we understand the use of refined foods (metropolitan) and their addictive effects on psycho-physiological processes.  The seminar discusses an holistic approach to health including the balance of emotional, spiritual and physical well being.
  
 
 
 

       

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© 2002 Center for World Indigenous Studies