Illness is a Weapon

Australian and American natives have a raw deal. Before the Europeans arrived, they were doing just fine, and now they’re stuck on reservations where you have alcoholism, family violence, teen pregnancy, and worse. In the first chapter of this book, the author discusses how white Australian nurses couldn’t treat “aboriginal” diseases, which they first saw on the reservation areas. It’s understandable that they couldn’t treat the diseases, because what kind of medical professional can handle an illness that he/she has never seen? But these were not really “aboriginal” diseases; the afflicted people had never seen them before either. They were in fact reactions to foods and lifestyles that their bodies were not accustomed to.

Eric Saethre’s book is a fine and detailed work on the dangers of the industrial diet. In the chapter Food, Meaning, and Economy, the indigenous Australians are given free food from the government, consisting of white flour and other refined foods. The result-diabetes, high blood pressure, and tooth decay. Later chapters cover excessive pill use, which isn’t good either. Many of the illnesses seen in native peoples can be avoided with the traditional diet. The problem is that the government pushes for the “civilization” and “modernization” of peoples, which is not what they need. Another reason is that it’s cheap to ship processed carbs and meats, because they don’t rot and don’t need refrigeration. Traditionally, these people hunted for meat, but with their hunting lands gone, they have no choice by to use salted ham. Until the Europeans arrived, they had no salt at all.

I am reminded of the book Looking For Lost Bird, where a Navajo woman, adopted by whites as an infant, returns to her tribe as an adult. She’s faced with a dilemma; a 13 year old boy is punching the girls on the school bus, and nobody knows what to do. So she asks the tribal elders what the arrangement was before the whites arrived, and they say “boys and girls were kept separate from each other.” She then asks what the tribe would’ve done about this boy 200 years ago, and they say “his family would’ve been told to leave if they couldn’t control him.” Well that’s exactly what the tribe did. They told his family to pack up and leave the reservation! The only way to handle the problem is to go back to the traditional form of discipline.

Even Gandhi had these issues in mind when he began his quest for Indian independence. The first thing he did was return to traditional handcrafts, foods, clothes, and exercises. Now if you look at India, they’ve thrust themselves into the “modern” world. They’ve traded traditional foods for pizza and cake, and diabetes is rampant.