Indigenous Perspectives on Health

This website focuses on Indigenous Knowledge as applied to modern health issues. The website offers statistics on some modern issues, mainly the history of types of cancer but also talks about the way modern chemicals like PCB and DDT find their way into indigenous people's lives and bodies. This issue of disproportionate harm is very important. Indigenous people suffer from modern dangers that they had nothing to do with. These are not minor health effects either but can develop into substantial illnesses. The document proceeds to graphically represent indigenous perspectives on mental and physical health. These are perspectives desired by some in the western world and ones that should be more widely considered. The Alaska natives have a very smart outlook when you analyze the graphs, an outlook that makes westerners reexamine what is important. The harm modern technologies and inventions has done unto indigenous people needs to be compensated for along with reestablishing our modern values.

-Rachel McCaffrey