The Aṉangu Ngangkaṟi Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation (ANTAC), based in northern South Australia, is the first organisation of Aboriginal traditional healers in the country. Its aim is to support the maintenance and continued practice of ancient Aboriginal traditional medicinal systems.
ANTAC is the result of several encounters between Italian-born academic Dr Francesca Panzironi and APY Lands healers. Together and alongside years of research, they hope to ensure that traditional Aboriginal medicine is widely available and accessible to all Australians, Aboriginal or not.
"I was determined to understand if there were any Aboriginal healers left in Australia or if they disappeared, as some people told me. My question was, 'what happened?'," the former lecturer in international human rights law tells SBS Italian.
When Dr Panzironi started her research, she found that a chapter on Australia in a World Health Organisation report on traditional medicines made no mention of Aboriginal medicine, and was focussed on Chinese traditional medicine instead.
"Why?," she asked, beginning a long journey that took her from the University of New South Wales in Sydney to the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands (APY) in South Australia.
'The research became a life path'
Dr Panzironi arrived in the APY lands in 2008, following a suggestion by Tauto Sansbury, then CEO of one of the Aboriginal Community Health Services.
"The research was supposed to last for a year, but then it became four years, and then a life path," she says.
After interviewing 150 health services professionals in South Australia, Panzironi decided to visit communities in the APY Lands.
"I still remember my first trip to Fregon. I started talking about this with a man outside the general store in the village and at some point he started talking about 'us [healers]' and the 'ngangkaṟi group,' she says.
'Ngangkaṟi' means healer in the Pitjantjatjara language.
"At the time I knew little or nothing, there was little literature about it and according to some, traditional Aboriginal medicine had disappeared," she told SBS Italian.
But after that encounter, Dr Panzironi started organising meetings with local healers and finally started to find answers to her questions.
'An ancient practice'
Today ANTAC is a traveling clinic that works with different communities, in hospitals, and in prisons.
"We are working very hard to continue the ancient practice of Aboriginal traditional healing handed down from generation to generation in today's world," says the organisation's website.
"To this purpose, ANTAC has developed a new service delivery model to make Aboriginal traditional healing accessible to the general public, health services, correctional services and any organisation or institution interested to learn and experience Aboriginal traditional medicine."
South Australian legislation recognises the contribution of Indigenous medicine in the treatment of mental illnesses through the Mental Act of 2009.
One step after another, the traditional medicine is more accessible but, Dr Panzironi says, there is still a long way to go, as it's not yet recognised as alternative medicine by leading bodies.
Dr Panzironi's proposes in her Hand in Hand report, "the inclusion of Aboriginal traditional medicine within Australia's national health care system through the development of a two-way health care model to guarantee the systematic provision of Aboriginal traditional medicine hand-in-hand with western medicine".
Under a new program announced this year at the Lyell McEwin Hospital, in SA, the traditional healers will work alongside doctors and nurses to provide what hospital staff have described as a "complementary" treatment to medical care.
Health in body, mind and spirit
Aboriginal traditional medicine goes beyond physical wellbeing, says Panzironi. The nganakri aim to treat patients' mind and spirit as well as physical health.
Panzironi says the ngankari perceive a person’s spirit through a healing touch called the 'pampuni' and place a misaligned spirit back into the body.
"The healers identify the problem area on the body-usually by feeling the stomach and they detect any pain or blockage. And with their hands they take it out," says Dr Panzironi.
Other methods used to complement mainstream treatment are Mapampa (blowing techniques) and Marali (spiritual healing and bush medicines).
"In a certain sense it's energy healing but it's more than that," says Dr Panzironi. "It's very different from what we are used to think of in the Western culture, like Reiki, or meditation."
"The spirit is not out there in the sky but the human spirit is inside each one of us."
