Ideas, concepts, and themes of a story or literature are presented in various forms of literature. Therefore, authors have the freedom to choose how to present their literature. The content of the literature that is being presented can be the same but the form of presentation can be differing. This paper is will discuss the state of the literature of two articles examining how these two articles present different histories about a common similar subject.
To begin with, the precise subject of both articles is centered on health and healing. Alice’s article tells the history of health and healing by means of biomedical care initiated by the medical missions of the Canadian Methodist Church for the indigenous settlements. The article presents that health and healing were associated with God’s grace and therefore the medical missions placed emphasis on providing biomedical care like an evangelizing strategy through their medico-spiritual activities. Also, the article presents that health and healing were accepted in the indigenous communities through the integration of biomedical care with their traditional cultural treatment practices. The attempts by the missionaries to implement the Euro-Canadian concept of health and healing in the indigenous settlements through assimilation lead to an unintended outcome. Literally, the indigenous healing was not abandoned, the indigenous communities instead acknowledge both disadvantages and advantages of biomedicine and then integrated biomedical care in their culture.
The article tells its history based on the mutual integration of Euro-Canadian together with indigenous health and healing provision. To bring out the history clearly the author has used a narrative of a life experience of a certain doctor called Dr. Large to vividly state how medical pluralism practice emerged. Moreover, Alice, the author carried out a study analyzing the healing practices in the day-to-day life of the indigenous communities, from ways of preventing diseases during pregnancies, to caring for family members, to the preparation for the afterlife. The observations and findings from this study enabled the author to vividly explain the history of health and healing in our contemporary societies coming to a conclusion that medical pluralism eventually provided patients the accessibility to therapeutic options since they could use diverse medico-spiritual powers.
On the other hand, Kelm’s article talks about Aboriginal concepts of healing and physicality arising from ethnographies gathered in the course of the study at the time when reserves were being apportioned, the resources were being allocated, and the children were sent to schools. The article presents the history of health and healing through a literature review. The article tells the history of Aboriginals’ health and healing. It talks about their notion about the disease, the body, and medicine as well as ways to view the world under the contest of the colonization of Western medicine treatise as it was introduced in British Columbia in the 20th century. The article presents facts to support the Aboriginal ideas of the body which was interrupted by the presence of colonials causing interception in the medical epilogue for the missionaries and the doctors who were not native. The author has used the day-to-day life experiences and practices to bring out the theme clearly asserting that the human realm at that time was their day-to-day practice which was characterized by the extramundane features of village life.
The article provides significant details of Aboriginal origins of body formation and health while explaining ways to become and be an expert healer. The article asserts that bodies are significant to nature and the progressiveness of such incorporated beings. Management of resources was infused with rituals as well as rules meant to make sure that the people’s health is collectively observed. The article has also focused on the rituals and taboos of the Aboriginals significantly to relate to the foundation and core aspect of ritual cleanliness and medicine. Plants were used as medicine through the ability to utilize the required training to obtain power that would facilitate them to do so. Eventually, novice doctors came into the community by conducting their visual presentations to the public. To travel around providing treatment to the people, doctors, and spiritual helpers collaborated as specialists in this sort of cross-border initiative. Apart from healing the sick, Aboriginal doctors identified witches. According to this article, the Aboriginal doctors’ powers were believed to be originating from the non-human and human worlds.
To sum up, these two articles narrate different histories about the same subject; health and healing. This subject has been narrated in different ways in the articles. Alice’s article, it tells the history of health and healing by means of biomedical care initiated by the medical missions of the Canadian Methodist Church for the indigenous settlements and talks about Aboriginal concepts of healing and physicality arising from ethnographies. It is evident that the subject of health and healing in both articles has been told in different ways.