by Lynn Cherry and Mark J. Plotkin

Guidelines for Philosophical Discussion

by Heather Slutz

The Shaman's Apprentice, by Lynn Cherry and Mark J. Plotkin, is a story of a little boy in a native village. Mark J. Plotkin is an ethnobotinist who worked in the village of Kwamala with the Tirio people. The Tirio people live in the northeast region of the Amazon rain forest. The village of the Tirio people is along the Brazil-Suriname border. They are an agraian culture which utilizes the slash and burn farming method. They are also hunters and fishers. Currently, the Tirio people are being threatened by the gold miners and foreign loggers who have come into the area in recent years. Mark J. Plotki was inspired by the medical practices of the Tirio people which involve the use of medicinal plants by the tribe shaman.

In the the book, the boy's name is Kamanya, and he lives in the village of Kwamala. When Kamanya becomes sick, it is the Shaman who heals him. Soon a person from the next village comes to be cured by the Shaman, but he dies. When white people come to the village of Kwamala they bring pills which cure the diseases that the Shaman can not. This causes doubt among the Tirio people about the strength of their medicine and religious beliefs. Ultimately, they regain faith when an ethnobotinist points out that the medicine contained in the pills came from the rain forest itself.

The Shaman's Apprentice addresses epistemological issues. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy which studies issues about the nature of knowledge. The Epistemological issues raised in The Shaman's Apprentice concern what we know - and how we know what we know. The book also addresses metaphysical issues. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy which deals with the nature of the world and covers such issues as theories of mind, religion, free will, time, and even scientific issues. The Shaman's Apprentice addresses metaphysical issues such as belief in nature vs. man and differences in the perception of medicinal cures. Ultimately, this is a book about the perseverence of a culture even as a people from outside this culture attempt to change it.

Continue to question set for this story