The ngangkari Healing Power: Conversation with Lance Sullivan, Yalarrnga Healer

This chapter is based on the transcript of a one hour filmed conversation with an Indigenous healer, a Yalarrnga ritual leader who grew up in the desert community of Boulia and studied archaeology and anthropology at James Cook University: Lance Sullivan was invited to France in 2017 by the festival of Shamanism and Ancient Traditions that gathered 200 healers from around the world. He then agreed to share publicly his knowledge and experience to explain how he was initiated as a child to heal according to the ngangkari ‘cleverman’ tradition practiced by different desert tribes. His examples of the way he operates to pull out the source of pain from men and women, who suffer physically or spiritually, demonstrate that people’s health is connected with the care of the land. He also comments on different forms of magic love and sorcery.

The meaning ofdukunand allure of Sufi healers: How Persian cosmopolitans transformed Malay–Indonesian history

For contemporary Malay/Indonesian speakers,dukunsignifies an indigenous healer. Etymologically, however, the worddukunis not native to Malay/Indonesian. Some saydukunis Arabic, but this article claims it is more Persian than Arabic. When fifteenth-century Persian settlers brought the proto-form of the worddukunto the Malay Archipelago, they also brought cosmopolitan notions of Sufism, faith and healing. Eventually orthodox Arab immigrants and Europeans denigrated Sufi healers as ‘indigenous’.Dukunbecame a rhetorical foil demonstrating how superb Western physicians or orthodox Arabs were by comparison. Gradually, thedukun'sreputation became intertwined with negative attitudes about ‘indigenous’ practices.

The Western Psychiatrist and his Non-Western Clientele: Transcultural Experiences of Relevance to Psychotherapy with Canadian Indian Patients.

Whenever a Western-trained psychiatrist is faced with the challenge of treating patients from a non-Western society, his responsibility is greater than when treating Western patients. He must acquire sufficient knowledge of that culture in order to distinguish between genuine psychiatric illness and culturally determined pathomorphic, that is illness-like, but not pathologic, states. He must also be able to gauge the degree of acculturation in his patient and to judge whether a therapist or indigenous healer of that very culture would not be of more benefit to this patient than Western psychiatry.