That Stuff Is Amazing

"There's a fear of [aboriginal remedies] or denial of it. If things can't be quantified or qualified, to them it's irrelevant."
"Who are they [doctors] to say she will make it with their treatments? Just because they have a degree, that makes them more knowledgeable?"
Six Nations resident Laurie Hill

TOM BLACKWELL/NATIONAL POST   One of the traditional cancer treatments available at Ancestral Voices Healing Centre on Six Nations reserve. The community is embroiled in a court dispute over a girl who has refused chemotherapy for leukemia.

"Even if we say there is not one child who has been cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia by traditional methods, is that a reason to invoke child protection?"
Are we to second guess her and say, 'You know what, we don't care?' ... Maybe First Nations culture doesn't require every child to be treated with chemotherapy and to survive for that culture to have value."
Justice Gethin Edward, Ontario Court of Justice

Two mind-blasting statements. One issued in an ethnic-cultural fog of defiance, the other in a politically correct mindset of indifference to the fate of a child balanced against the social requirement to politely accede to the demands of an aboriginal community whose heritage must be recognized as hallowed. Sufficiently so to toss out all that medical science has achieved through research and successful treatments.

At the heart of the matter is how the courts will decide on the treatment of an eleven year old First Nations girl who was diagnosed with leukemia and who was being treated with the proven medical convention of chemotherapy at McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton. The little girl was distressed at the always-disturbing side-effects of chemotherapy and grasped at her mother's decision to use traditional native treatment instead.

The First Nations family ignored the pleas of medical specialists to have the child continue treatment at the hospital as the only way of saving her life, since the treatment has an acknowledged and verifiable cure rate of about 80%, whereas traditional native treatment is unknown, has never been shown to be effective in solving the medical dilemmas that plague society. The Children's Aid Society brought in by the hospital to become involved, washed their hands of the situation.

Which left only a court challenge. And here's what Justice Edward had to say, that physicians "impose our world view on First Nation culture". That the very idea of a cancer treatment judged on the basis of survival statistics is "completely foreign" to aboriginal culture. There must be many First Nations people who are not ignorantly defiant of logic and experience outside their immediate culture, living in a society for whom medical science has brought a saving grace to grave medical conditions.

It would seem, however, that at the Ancestral Voices Healing Centre where native herbal remedies are relied upon to improve all the troubling aspects of life from mental health, to earning a living, to coping with a threatening illness, and trust in 'magic', those concoctions take first place over proven medical interventions. Daphne Jarvis, the lawyer for McMaster Children's Hospital stated the girl's mother had claimed she wants a cure for her child.

In that spirit, and for that purpose she is using traditional native 'cures'. Despite that no evidence exists, either empirical or "experiential" to demonstrate that traditional methods are capable of successfully treating childhood leukemia. Doctors at the hospital point out that another 11-year-old First Nations child with cancer earlier this year dropped out of chemotherapy treatment and has now suffered a relapse. "That is clear and unequivocal", noted Ms. Jarvis.

TOM BLACKWELL/NATIONAL POST    Hayley Doxtater examines some of the traditional medicines available at Ancestral Voices Healing Centre on Six Nations reserve. The community is embroiled in a court dispute over a girl who has refused chemotherapy for leukemia.

At the Six Nations reserve, Hayley Doxtater, an employee of Ancestral Voices pointed out a typical cancer treatment represented by a collection of herbs including slippery elm and turkey rhubarb root. One customer, she stated, repeatedly travels an hour from Toronto to buy it for a sick friend. "We have people come in here who are so happy that something works. They'll say' That stuff is amazing'."