Suzanne's Mom's Blog

My daughter-in-law and I got interested in a kind of tumeric tea that we bought at the farmers market before Covid. Since then, I’ve tried other kinds of tumeric tea just because I like the weird flavor. And as today’s article points out, tumeric has long been known to reduce inflammation.

At Hyperallergic, Valentina Di Liscia wrote recently about similar tried and (sometimes) true traditional remedies that are featured in something called the Archive of Healing.

“The digital archive features hundreds of thousands of entries describing cures, rituals, and healing methods spanning two centuries, with a focus on protecting Indigenous knowledge from for-profit exploitation.

“The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)’s Archive of Healing, one of the most comprehensive databases of medicinal folklore in the world, is now accessible online. The interactive, searchable website boasts hundreds of thousands of entries describing cures, rituals, and healing methods spanning more than 200 years and seven continents.

“The site … focuses on the preservation of Indigenous traditions and customs related to wellness.

“The project started five decades ago, when former UCLA professors Wayland Hand and Michael Owen Jones led teams of students to document medicinal practices described in university archives, published sources, anthropologists’ field notes, and their own family folklore.

In 1996, the school received a grant to digitize the research — encompassing more than a million handwritten four-by-six note cards — and transform it into a searchable database then known as the ‘Archive of Traditional Medicine.’

“But somehow, the massive trove remained a little-known resource until 2012, when a librarian at UCLA came across the database and alerted Dr. David Delgado Shorter, Professor of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. Shorter, who had just published a book based on fieldwork with the Yoeme communities in northwest Mexico and launched a digital tool to help Indigenous people preserve their languages, was ‘blown away’ by the archive.

“ ‘It was just sitting there probably for years without people knowing about it,’ Shorter said in an interview. … ‘In some ways it’s fantastic that no one knew about it, because in this day and age, someone could have created a mining program and simply just pulled all the material from the database,’ he added. … His team safeguarded the data in a secure server.

“One of Shorter’s priorities is protecting Indigenous knowledge from exploitation by for-profit entities, such as pharmaceutical companies. For that reason, some entries in the archive do not mention specific plant names or recipes unless that information is already widely known.

“As dangerous health-related disinformation surged during the coronavirus pandemic, many have become wary of alternative medicine. The archive’s initial compilers were folklorists, not medical doctors, and the website includes a disclaimer that the entries do not constitute medical advice. … Users can flag entries they deem inappropriate. …

“Most importantly, these spices, plants, and other healing methods can deepen our understanding of how different cultures view the body, wellness, and community.

“ ‘The whole goal here is to democratize what we think of as healing and knowledge about healing, and take it across cultures in a way that’s respectful and gives attention to intellectual property rights,’ said Shorter.”

Hooray for librarians who alert people to “treasure troves”! More at Hyperallergic, here.