There’s a distinct tendency for some clueless folks to go all misty-eyed and start drooling over the notion of “indigenous wisdom,” namely that a bunch of pre-literate savages with a life expectancy in the twenties with double-digit infant mortality somehow possessed some great store of wisdom and knowledge. They didn’t. Life sucked for those people, and most of the “wisdom” they had in matters like medicine were crap.

But that doesn’t stop the fuzzy-headed brigades. Oh, the primitives did know some remarkable things; they weren’t stupid, just ignorant.

Over the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in indigenous knowledge. The United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa have been at the forefront of the movement to integrate ‘ancient wisdom’ with modern science and decision-making by applying it to everything from public health to climate change. The appeal is both understandable and alluring. For millennia, indigenous cultures have accumulated a vast repository of information that has helped them to adapt and survive. Prior to European contact, the Quechua of the Andes used quinine from the bark of the cinchona tree to treat fevers. It later proved to be the first effective treatment for malaria. Salicin from the willow tree was used by tribes in the Americas to treat pain, fever, and inflammation and led to the development of aspirin. The active ingredient in snakeroot,  reserpine, was used for centuries by native peoples in India to treat high blood pressure and was adopted by Western physicians as an early treatment for hypertension. From stellar navigation to sophisticated construction techniques, agricultural innovations, and hunting strategies, indigenous knowledge has made significant contributions to human progress.  

Here’s the onion:

While these achievements deserve respect, many practices promoted under the banner of indigenous knowledge lack scientific merit and should be approached with caution. In Australia, attempts to incorporate the Aboriginal practice of ‘spiritual healing’ into the health system have been met with alarm as it involves a belief in sorcery and supernatural intrusions rather than biological agents. In the United States, alternative treatments include Native American herbal remedies, spiritual ceremonies, and sweat lodges. The use of these untested therapies divert valuable resources away from evidence-based medicine and can legitimize ineffective alternatives. In some cases cancer patients have refused proven treatments for traditional remedies.  

I’ll be a little more direct: Rubes are being taken in by charlatans peddling non-scientific woo in the name of indigenous wisdom, or something.

Leave it to South Park to ridicule this nitwittery (yes, that is Tommy Chong’s voice at the end):

This isn’t unique to the West. In places like China, ignorant rubes still believe stupid crap like the magic healing properties of rhinoceros horns, which is creating a huge black market for smuggled rhino horn; this leads to poaching, which leads to rhinos being an endangered species. That sucks.

It would be great if these nitwits would stop believing in fairy tales. Modern medicine isn’t perfect, but it sure beats going to a tribal with doctor when you have a brain tumor.