By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
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When somebody consults us, doctors, regarding a health issue, we usually just take into consideration that person’s tangible data – blood pressure, blood chemistry, diet, exercise, sleep, current medicines. There is one important thing we often forget to ask. “How are your relationships?” Relationships are an important determinant of one’s health.
It is October and October is Indigenous Peoples’ Month so we start tackling this topic because in indigenous communities, your relationships define how “gawis” or healthy you are. In indigenous communities, being healthy means a holistic state of well-being.
People are really created as social beings. Since conception, humans are social – for us to reproduce and continue the race, two people must unite or at least, an egg and a sperm needs to unite. We cannot clone ourselves or just divide. A person does not exist in isolation. We are born into families because a baby cannot feed itself. We are raised in communities thus the adage “It takes a village to raise a child.” As such, we are connected to elders, shaped by culture, and sustained by the land. Well-being is therefore more than the absence of a physical ailment. It is also about the quality of our relationships—with other people, with our community, even those who have gone before us, with our culture, and with the environment, with the unseen.
This way of looking at health is increasingly relevant even to modern medicine.
A person who has loving family members, trusted friends, supportive neighbors, and a strong sense of belonging have resources that help them face illness and adversity. Someone who is sick may find courage in a family member sitting beside the hospital bed, a neighbor bringing food, or a community coming together to help. We have the practice of og-ogbo- from building a house, celebrating vital events, planting and harvesting palay, helping the sick, etc. We have concerts for a cause, walk for a cause, etc. You would be amazed at how many informal support groups we have here in the Cordillera.
These acts may not appear on a medical chart, but they are a vital part of healing.
The opposite is also true. Loneliness, family conflict, social isolation, discrimination, and the breakdown of community relationships can become sources of stress. Prolonged stress can affect sleep, behavior, emotional well-being, and physical health. A person may have access to medicine and still struggle to become well when the social environment around them is unhealthy.
Relationships also shape everyday health choices. Families influence what we eat. Friends influence our habits. The current craze of ukulele playing is an example of social influence. Our alcohol drinking problem in Sagada is another example of friends supporting a bad behaviour. Parents shape the health of their children. Elders transmit knowledge about food, plants, practices, and ways of living. Communities can either encourage healthy behavior or make unhealthy behavior seem normal.
For Indigenous peoples like us, Igorots, there is an even larger relationship to consider: the relationship with ancestral land.
Land provides food, water, medicinal plants, livelihood, identity, and a sense of belonging. When access to ancestral land is threatened, the consequences may therefore extend beyond economics or the environment. They can also affect cultural continuity, mental well-being, nutrition, and community life.
This reminds us that health care cannot be confined within the walls of a clinic or a hospital.
A doctor may treat hypertension. A nurse may provide care. A hospital may save a life. But health is actually created in homes, farms, kitchens, communities, schools, forests, and places where people gather and care for one another.
This is one of the lessons Indigenous perspectives can offer modern healthcare: a healthy person is not simply a healthy body. We are people in relationship.
Our health is connected to the people who care for us, the communities to which we belong, the culture that gives us identity, and the land that sustains us.
So the next time we ask someone, “How are you?”, we should listen beyond the answer. Because, most often, to understand a person’s health, we need to understand the relationships that surround that person.***
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“Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another….” Hebrews 10:25
