Why is There a Need for an Alternative Onto-Epistemic Understanding of Health for Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers?

Abstract

The current paper illuminates existing problems and paradoxes in the perception of the health and healing practises of contemporary hunter-gatherer (H-G) communities, i.e. the Aranadan (A), Cholanaikkan (C), Kattuniakkan (K), and Paniyan (P) of Nilambur valley, Kerala, India. The health knowledge system and healing practises of the selected H-G communities are entrenched in historical context, grounded on individual as well as community experiences, deposited in environmental context and encompasses both the empirical and unempirical knowledge of healing. The studies find that the contemporary H-G’s fail to acknowledge the new experience of illness caused by the diversity and fluidity of transition and displacement from the primary spatial context where beliefs, logics and worldviews were formulated. This has caused numerous serious health disparities among H-G communities. This paper argues for a new onto-epistemological model to address the new experience of illness of contemporary H-G’s.