Russell Means | The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the...
Western scientific thinking and modern medicine are neither the whole of scientific and medicinal practice nor incompatible with indigenous/traditional practice. We don’t need to abandon scientific advancements that we’ve already made, but we definitely need to rethink how we conceive of “progress” or we descend into scientism which is just colonialism with a “rational” face on it. Exploitation and culture erasure is not a prerequisite for medicine.
Western scientific thinking and modern medicine are neither the whole of scientific and medicinal practice nor incompatible with indigenous/traditional practice. We don’t need to abandon scientific advancements that we’ve already made, but we definitely need to rethink how we conceive of “progress” or we descend into scientism which is just colonialism with a “rational” face on it. Exploitation and culture erasure is not a prerequisite for medicine.