Continuing TEK

I found a website http://shr.aaas.org/tek/ which speaks of a project by AAAS that is trying to maintain TEK and extrapolate TEK ideas with science and human rights in order to fix problems in regards to the loss of TEK. I feel this relates very well to our class.

I also wanted to share something I remembered during Professor Peña's lecture. He spoke of indigenous people giving birth outside of hospitals. As I have mentioned, I lived in Costa Rica and visited various indigenous communities. One of the communities I spent a lot of time with were the Ngobe people in southern Costa Rica. The women give birth outside of hospitals because the doctors will make them lie down for giving birth; the Ngobe women give birth standing up holding on to some sort of rope or pole. This is actually better than giving birth lying down because gravity helps, and also there is far less chance of hemorrhage from the baby pushing inside the mother. My professor in Costa Rica is a doctor, and he admitted that the only reason women lie down to give birth is because it is more convenient for the doctor. It is interesting that the TEK is at times better than our medical system (although, of course, in the case of a serious complication it is helpful to be able to go to a hospital).
I also did a lot of research on medicinal plants, and there are quite a number that the indigenous people know of that in fact have ended up being used in medicines. This ties back to bioprospecting that I mentioned a few blogs back.