Contrasting epistemologies: Biomedicine, narrative medicine and indigenous story medicine.

Abstract

Narrative Medicine (NM) and Indigenous Story Medicine both use narrative to understand and effect health, but their respective conceptualizations of narrative differ. I contrast the concept of narrative in NM with that of Indigenous Story Medicine. The article relies Western narrative theorists as well as Indigenous epistemologists to frame a discussion-by-contrast of the Judeo-Christian creation myth with a Haundenosaunee Creation Story. I demonstrate that the deficiencies of Narrative Medicine exist because the latter's use of narrative is a mere application in an otherwise reductive field, whereas Indigenous epistemologies rely on story as medicine itself. OMIT. I call for more scholars to take up different narratives to further investigate the ethical space between NM and Indigenous Story Medicine.