Traditional Indigenous medicine celebrated in new Aboriginal television series
From Thunder Bay Chroncile Journal ...
Aboriginal physician travels world to study shamans, healers for new TV series
By LISA ARROWSMITH - August 14, 2007
EDMONTON (CP) - Sick with the flu, Dr. Daniele Behn Smith felt a ripple of fear as she stood on the outskirts of a tribal trance dance in Namibia and waited for a whirling, zombie-like medicine man to touch her chest.
The aboriginal doctor, 27 years old when she joined the healing ceremony of the African San people in September 2006, was a long way from the northeastern British Columbia community of Fort Nelson where she was born.
That’s where she’d started her eight-month journey to document the world’s indigenous healers, shamans and medicine people. The project explored how their knowledge could relate to modern medicine for a new television series called Medicine Woman, to be broadcast this fall in Canada on Vision TV.
The previous day, Behn Smith had attended a ceremony where the medicine man had tried to heal a sick baby. He went into what she thought was a frightening trance as members of the tiny community clapped and chanted to help him commune with the spirit world.
Battling stomach cramps and diarrhea, Behn Smith had been ducking out every few minutes to relieve herself as the camera crew filmed the latest ceremony. Now the healer was going around the circle, from person to person, and Behn Smith grew afraid as her turn approached.
"He came up to me and did his singing and dancing around me and put his hand on my chest," she said in an interview from her home in Dawson City, Yukon, where she now has a family practice.
"From that moment forward, my stomach was fine. Everything was fine. My body was completely healed."
It was just one of several life-changing experiences for Behn Smith, a member of the Eh-Cho Dene, as she travelled to 10 countries and several continents - from the fringe of the Arctic Circle to the jungles of Asia and the grasslands of Africa - to learn about traditional healing.
Filming began last August in Behn Smith’s hometown of Fort Nelson, B.C., and wrapped up in February in Saskatchewan.
The doctor, who grew up in Winnipeg, saw many things. The power of herbs from Celtic herbalist and Druid arch-priestess Gina McGarry in Ireland. The healing energy of Ruben Orellana Neira, a Peruvian archeologist, who discovered new digs at Machu Picchu, and established the Kamaquen Healing Center in Peru’s Urubamba Valley.
But the same thread ran through every mystical or healing experience.
"I knew that there was this fundamental connection and understanding among indigenous people about what true health is, and that there is this connection with an energy greater than ourselves that needs to be acknowledged," Behn Smith said.
There were also the not-so-mystical experiences such as going head-to-head with a five-centimetre-long cockroach that invaded her hotel bathroom in Sri Lanka.
She didn’t feel very spiritual as she tried to batter the giant bug with a pink slipper, finally summoning the courage to crunch it with a heavy hiking boot.
"I had to summon all of my strength to go back in and hit this cockroach over the head, which I did, and killed it. That took all my energy so I couldn’t even bring myself to scoop it up."
She didn’t shower for five days, fearing retribution by giant members of the bug’s cockroach clan.
"They fly!" she exclaimed. "If I’d known that, I would have slept in our van."
Her healing experiences have changed her in subtle ways that her patients in Dawson City may not detect, Behn Smith said.
"I don’t go in trying to heal people or affect change. I go in praying to the Creator that the Creator will use me that day to try and honour someone else’s experience."
But filming the series has also forced her to take a more holistic approach. She now says she recognizes that some health problems - and the state of the planet - may be related to a lack of spiritual and social well-being or a failure to recognize that all living things are connected.
Shirley Cheechoo, an award-winning Ontario-based Cree director, actor and playwright, was recruited to direct the series at a pitch session in Cannes a couple of years ago. Australian co-producer Norm Wilkinson of Visionquest Entertainment had been kicking around the idea for a few years and approached her.
Cheechoo well remembers meeting the Peruvian healer.
"He came up to me and said, ’You better go home and take care of your liver.’ I came home ... and discovered that I had problems with my liver," said Cheechoo in an interview from Manitoulin Island, Ont.
"It struck me, how did he know that just by looking at me?"
Gerry Sperling, executive producer for Regina-based 4 Square Productions, raised the $1.5-million cost of the Australian co-production and set off on a quest to narrow the field of 20 potential aboriginal show hosts.
"They had to be female, beautiful, young and they had to be an M.D.," Sperling said. "I think the aboriginal community should be proud that they had so many aboriginal female doctors out there."
With U.S. and international distribution deals either inked or in the works, Sperling said the show should have universal appeal. "People are looking for alternative ways to treat themselves, and ancient ways to treat themselves, and this is what happens in the series."
The series will also be broadcast on APTN and SCN in Canada.