Presentation on Traditional Aboriginal Medicine
Raymond Obomsawin PhD.

Thursday, January 24, 2008 1:30 - 2:30 p.m.
Location: 220 Laurier Ave W. Ste 1400 (NAHO offices)

Dr. Obomsawin will provide a presentation on a background paper that he has prepared entitled ' Traditional Medicine for Canada’s First Peoples'. This paper was prepared as background reading for FNIHB staff and primary health care professionals who work with First Nations and Inuit, and hold an interest in understanding Aboriginal cultures and knowledge systems.   Topics covered in this presentation will include: background on the historical destruction and suppression of Traditional Medicine; traditional Aboriginal concepts on health restoration; the domestic and global picture of traditional medicine practice today (with emphases on plant medicines).

Key questions will be answered such as:

• Is Traditional Medicine really essential in the modern world?
• Can and should there be a progressive integration of Traditional and selective allopathic medicine?
• Would it be possible and desirable to establish and maintain a fully viable Traditional Medicine System in Canada in the foreseeable future?

Presentations on Historical and Scientific Perspectives on the Health of Canada’s First Peoples Raymond Obomsawin PhD.

Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:45 - 4:00 p.m.
Location: 220 Laurier Ave W. Ste 1400 (NAHO offices)

Employing wide ranging historical research and paleo-pathological data this presentation will address:

• Pre-contact and post contact health and disease conditions as prevalent among Canada’s First Peoples.
• The health impacts of the historically evolving socio-economic relationship between Aboriginal Peoples and an increasingly dominant Euro-Canadian society.
• Popularized biases and assumptions surrounding infectious disease epidemics and later endemic degenerative disease conditions.
• Key determinant factors underlying the big picture of health and disease that history unveils.

Challenging questions will also be examined relative to government sponsored Western medical services and health outcomes among Aboriginal peoples. In light of historical evidence-based nutrition and life patterns, more traditional and holistic approaches to disease prevention and cure will be explored.

Brief Professional Background Overview on Raymond Obomsawin - Ph.D.

Raymond Obomsawin has served as Director National Office of Health Development - National Indian Brotherhood (AFN); and Founding Chairman - NIB's National Commission Inquiry on Indian Health; Executive Director in the California Rural Indian Health Board; Supervisor of Native Curriculum – Government of the Yukon Territory; and Evaluation Manager - Department of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. His most recent post in the Canadian public service was as Senior Advisor on Cultures, Knowledge Systems, Local Ownership and Ethnicities at the Canadian International Development Agency. He is currently engaged with government funding as Senior Researcher relative to establishing a Public Sector Policy on Traditional Medicine in Canada.

A few highlights of Dr. Obomsawin’s professional experiences and achievements follow:

• Co-Chaired the United Nations Environment Program - Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on the Potential Impacts of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (alius “Terminator Seed” technologies).
• Spearheaded the first world-wide inter-sectoral review funded by a Western government on Indigenous Culture Based Knowledge Systems in Development.  The study elicited the involvement of over 500 public and NGO sector bio-social development, technical and research institutions in all world regions, and entailed field mission research carried out in the Andean and upper Amazon regions of South America, as well as East Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
• He has produced academically and / or professionally over eighty (85) articles, reports, policy documents, presentations, and publications.

Last Update: August 11 2009