Link Between Animal and Human Welfare in Ecocentric Cultures of Northern Uganda

Western medical models are criticized for failing to consider values, methods, and philosophies of other cultural systems. This concern has particular relevance for communities where pervasive traumas have been sustained through a succession of colonial occupation, war, and environmental breakdown. Victims are faced with the profound task of re-creating meaning in a world foreign to the psychological, social, and ecological resources they acquired from contexts of origin: familiar ways of living, indigenous plants and animals, and attendant social customs and relationships are severely impaired. Understanding how these contexts relate to mental and physical restoration is therefore of increased import for recovery interventions in communities experiencing violence and displacement. However, even though a greater number of efforts seek to revitalize certain indigenous practices in recuperative strategies, most remain rooted in western anthropocentrism. In contrast, many indigenous cultures are ecocentric where identities cross species borders and human life and health are not segregated from those of other species. Wellbeing is therefore defined by the concomitant recovery of nature: animal and human welfare are interdependent. Here, through a case study in Acholiland, Northern Uganda, we discuss the concept and practice of trans-species health recovery as an example relevant to other ecocentric cultures in similar crisis. We describe Acholi relational models of health and function with focal attention to children soldiers and orphans in the process of trauma recovery.