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Dear list members,
The final AABS seminar for the semester one series will be at 6:00-7:30pm
on Thursday May 31 in Lecture Theater S325 of the John
Woolley Building, University of Sydney.
We hope you can attend.
Kind regards,
AABS Executive
Die a herder and be born a yak, die a yak and be born a
herder: Traditional animal healing in Tibetan cultural areas.
The title of this talk is a common Bhutanese saying. It exemplifies the
unique relationship between animals and humans in the Tibetan cultural
area, which is built, in part, on Vajrayana Buddhist understandings of
rebirth, and on local shamanic traditions. In this context, relationships
are conceptualized as entangled, extended, interspecies kinship networks
that encompass multiple lifetimes, and they exist in an environment
populated with human and non-human beings, both embodied and disembodied.
Just as these beings share kinship networks and a physical environment,
they are also connected through health and illness. Healing practices maintain
homeostasis in this complex health ecosystem. All embodied beings share
the same five Buddhist cosmo-physical elements and the disembodied beings
are related through networks of reciprocity. This talk will briefly cover
the history and current state of traditional veterinary regimes in
Tibetan cultural areas, specifically Bhutan. It will also outline
traditional animal healing practices where they inform explanatory models
of illness causation, and various Buddhist and local rituals involving
animals that serve to not only treat but prevent illness and injury in
this interspecies nexus of health relationships.
Catherine Schuetze
is an Australian veterinary surgeon, medical anthropologist and a current
PhD student at the University of Sydney researching the veterinary
anthropology of Bhutan. She founded the NGO, Vets Beyond Borders in 2004
and while living in India and Bhutan over the last decade, helped
establish and manage animal welfare and public health programs. She works
part time in Sydney as a veterinarian specialising in companion animal
acupuncture, integrated medicine, and palliative care.
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