FEATURE-Ethnobotanist links rain forests, cultures, kids Story-Date: 08:12 a.m. PST Thursday , April 30, 1998 ------------------------------------------------------------ FEATURE-Ethnobotanist links rain forests, cultures, kids By Barbara Novovitch WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Western science often scoffs at shamans, the medicine men of indigenous tribes of Amazonia, but scientist and author Mark Plotkin has personal knowledge of their wisdom -- and now he is passing it on to children, even the children of those Indian tribes. Pupils in the Tirio Indian tribe in Suriname are using his latest book, "The Shaman's Apprentice," as a botany handbook, reading about themselves and learning about the healing arts of their ancient shamans. Western science tends to denigrate as mumbo-jumbo what it cannot explain, Plotkin said in an interview with Reuters. But he recalled the time when he was searching for treatments for diabetes in the rain forest. One shaman who told him he did not know of any later dreamed about a tree whose bark could be used and gave Plotkin directions to find it. "This man is crippled, there's no way he's ever been up that trail," which was miles down the river and up paths the shaman had never traveled, the ethnobotanist said. But he said the Western scientists who dismiss such stories accept that Sir Humphrey Davy, the discoverer of benzene, had a dream in which he saw snakes chasing each other in circles. "He woke up and he said, `Eureka, benzene is a ring!' Which indeed it is. These types of things happen across the board in cultures that we can't explain, and that's our own ignorance." Plotkin said he wants "to marry the ancient wisdom of the shamans to the 21st century," and his children's book is another step toward that goal. The bearded, 42-year-old scientist has spent much of the last two decades in the South American rain forest, living with Indian tribes and learning from their shamans. RAIN FOREST'S POTENTIAL PHARMACEUTICAL RICHES His first book, "Tales of A Shaman's Apprentice," awakened Western readers to potential pharmaceutical riches in the fast-disappearing rain forest. It has gone through 14 printings and been translated into Dutch, German, Italian and Spanish, and a Japanese edition will be available later this year. The book made him a semi-celebrity -- lectures in the United States and abroad, the requisite photo story in People magazine, receipt of the Conservation Medal from the Zoological Society of San Diego. He has also become a one-man environmental conglomerate -- executive director of the Ethnobiology and Conservation Team (ECT), a nongovernmental organization engaged in rain forest projects; a consultant for Shaman's Pharmaceuticals; writer, lecturer and principal actor in the Academy Award-nominated IMAX documentary "Amazon," and research associate at the Smithsonian Institute. His second book retells a true story from the first. It is a collaboration with author-illustrator Lynne Cherry, whose "The Great Kapok Tree" is a children's classic. Her "Gauguinesque" illustrations are so exact that Tirio children can identify the plants in their own back yard, Plotkin said. "Every one of these is a true, botanically correct medicine plant used by the Tirios. ... This is their plants and their forest in color. This is a validation of their own culture." In addition, the book teaches "family values" -- respect your elders, learn from the old ways, cultural and biological diversity have value. "Why not marry these things?" he asked. "We all gotta breathe the air, drink the water. We need medicines when we get sick. Why politicize the environment?" EXPLOITING 20TH CENTURY TECHNOLOGY Plotkin believes in exploiting 20th century technology for conservation -- acquainting indigenous tribes in the rain forest with laptop computers and the global positioning system so they can map their own territory. The ECT, for example, puts its annual report and articles by and about its biologists, conservationists and anthropologists on the World Wide Web (http://www.ethnobotany.org). Plotkin and the ECT have set up Shaman's Apprentice programs with the Tirios in Suriname, the Inganos in Colombia, the Guaymis in Costa Rica and the Seris in Mexico. Sometimes the medicine men are not eager to share their knowledge with foreigners, Plotkin said, but they may pass it on to their own people. The ECT acts as a catalyst, providing initial training, notebooks and laptops so that indigenous communities can codify and disseminate traditional wisdom. The Maroons (Bushnegroes) of Suriname asked ECT to help them set up a program; now they are building a site for ecotourism at Tonka Island. Although the baby boomers of the late 20th century are eager to mix the centuries-old healing methods of the shamans with Western medicine, the medical establishment until recently has fought it. "The people who run the medical establishment came of age during the antibiotic revolution, a generation ago, so they equate healing with chemistry. They don't understand all the spiritual stuff. Now the young folks ... are interested in visualization, massage therapy, hypnosis, and all those things that are purely shamanic techniques," Plotkin said. "It's not a question of `You get the antibiotics' or `You get the prayer for healing' -- you combine the two. Alternative healing should be complementary (to Western medicine) -- that's common sense, not rocket science. We didn't understand how aspirin worked in the human body until relatively recently. Do you think we should have stopped taking aspirin for a headache for 100 years until we figured it out?" Most people do not realize how miserable life can become when the environment is neglected, Plotkin said. For example, most news reports about Rwanda and Haiti, the most degraded countries environmentally in Africa and the Western Hemisphere, did not mention environment as a cause for their woes. "But when you have overpopulation, maldistribution of resources and environmental degradation it's a recipe for disaster. That means our soldiers and our tax dollars being put in harm's way ... and it was because of the environment." ------------------------------------------------------------