Although at first glance it might seem that the increasingly rapid disappearance of indigenous languages has little or nothing to do with health, the truth is that most of the indigenous ancestral knowledge about medicinal plants is inextricably related to the particular language of each ethnic group.
Specialists assure that the disappearance of traditional languages represents an even greater danger for the survival of knowledge than the loss of biodiversity, since linguistic and biological information are totally interdependent, a subject on which Rodrigo Camara Leret, biologist at the University of Zurich (UZH) stated: “Every time an indigenous language dies, it is as if a library is burning, but we do not see it because it is silent.”
“We are losing the essence of our spiritual knowledge of medicinal plants. A knowledge that cannot be translated into other languages”. Uldarico Matapí Yucuna, 63, called the last shaman of the Matapi, an indigenous group of fewer than 70 people who live along the Mirití-Paraná river in the Colombian Amazon jungle.
To understand the problem more precisely, we tell you that according to information provided by the United Nations Organization (UN), of the 7,000 indigenous languages that are still spoken, 40% are in danger of extinction, and 80% of the remaining biodiversity in the world is located in indigenous territories.
The findings are the result of a new study titled: “Language extinction triggers the loss of unique medicinal knowledge” recently presented at the World Biodiversity Forum, for which the researchers reviewed the literature, including the first records of colonizers, to map the uses of medicinal plants and indigenous languages in three regions: North America, Northwest Amazonas and New Guinea, revealing that around 12 thousand medicinal uses for more than 3 thousand plants, known by people who speak 230 indigenous languages in these regions. But more than 75% of this knowledge resides in just one of these languages.
In this regard, the United Nations Organization (UN) ensures that all indigenous languages in the western Amazon are in danger of extinction, which means that the botanical knowledge accumulated by these groups is also in danger. In North America, endangered languages account for 86% of unique medicinal plant knowledge, and in New Guinea the figure is 31%.
“Indigenous peoples have accumulated sophisticated knowledge about plants and their services, including knowledge that they confer important health benefits, that is codified in their languages. However, indigenous knowledge is increasingly threatened by language loss and species extinction. On the one hand, the disuse of language is strongly associated with the decline of indigenous knowledge about plants. On the other hand, global change will limit the geographic ranges of many endemic plants and crops used by humans. Together, the extinction of language and the reduction of useful plant species in the next century may limit the full potential of nature’s contributions to people and the discovery of unintended uses.” PNAS. Language extinction triggers the loss of unique medicinal knowledge.
As we mentioned previously, and in contrast to the high proportion of threatened languages, less than 4% of the medicinal flora in the three regions covered by the study is at risk of extinction, which for Bascompte represents without a doubt, that the Knowledge is being lost at a faster rate than biodiversity, which is also undoubtedly highly worrying.
Tania Eulalia Martinez Cruz, An Ayuuk indigenous woman from Mexico, and a social science researcher at the University of Brussels, gave for example the way in which the indigenous people of Oaxaca have developed ways of growing plants during droughts, adding that “The loss of culture is also a loss of our ability to adapt and find solutions to growing environmental problems. The complexity of medicinal plants is a territorial knowledge. When you destroy a territory, you destroy nature, knowledge, our practices and our lives.”