Health and Justice - The Path of Liberation Through Medicine

Summary

Physician Rupa Marya’s 2018 Bioneers keynote, posted in 2024. Chronic illnesses, she argues, are “diseases of colonization”, bred by trauma, stress and damaging food systems. When a dam destroyed Standing Rock’s foraging forests, diabetes soared: harm done “not by changing the indigenous body but by changing the social structure around that body”. Her remedy: reintegrate and dismantle.

Rationale

Marya treats disease as we treat dispositions: made by surroundings more than choice. In an Alberta study she cites, First Nations that kept their language had less diabetes: culture reaching into bodies.