NAIDOC Week: Leading health agency gives tick to ancient Kuku Yalanji remedies
Indigenous “bush medicine” has been given a ringing endorsement from a leading health agency on the eve of Douglas Shire’s NAIDOC Week celebrations.
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INDIGENOUS “bush medicine” has been given a ringing endorsement from a leading health agency on the eve of Douglas Shire’s NAIDOC Week celebrations.
The Australian Digital Health Agency has released a new video of a respected Cooya Beach Kuku Yalanji leader showing the importance of the ancient remedies, many of which are found in the Daintree Rainforest.
Linc Walker, who runs Kuku Yalanji Cultural Habitat Tours, said it was important to preserve ancient cultural activities and knowledge, including bush medicines.
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“We use traditional medicine because we’ve always used it,” he said.
“When we were young it was too far to town, the shops were too far away and so we had to do this. It’s part of our life still.
“Our cultural activities have so much value and we didn’t want to lose it. We started learning from all of our elders, taking the information and the knowledge and developing it for today and for the future.”
In the video, Mr Walker teams up with Port Douglas pharmacist Brad Reilly to show him a range of local bush medicines and their applications, including the use of green ants to make three different medicines for sore throat and breathing problems, and the white fruit of beach lettuce squeezed softly for an eyewash or skin wash.
Mr Reilly said it was “an amazing experience” learning from someone who knows so much about the local area.
“What a lot of people don’t know is that some of the medicines we use day to day here in the pharmacy have their origins from the plants and animals in the lands around us,” he said. “Just because we’re taking it from the pharmacy shelf as a packaged medicine and dispensing it to patients doesn’t dismiss the original source of our modern medicines.”
Director of Clinical Services and Senior Medical Officer at Gurriny Yealamucka Health Service in Yarrabah, Dr Jason King, said he asked all his patients what bush medicines they were using and included the information in the medical records in his clinic.
Australian Digital Health Agency boss, Amanda Cattermole, said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can upload their uses of bush medicine to their My Health Record by including it in their personal health summary.
“This information can be used by health care providers to better understand and treat patients and help preserve key cultural heritage,” she said.
Originally published as NAIDOC Week: Leading health agency gives tick to ancient Kuku Yalanji remedies
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