Negotiating Traditional Healing and External Influences: Resilience among the Sukuma of Simiyu, Tanzania, 1920s-Early 2000s

Abstract

This research paper goes into great detail about how the Sukuma of Simiyu, Tanzania's traditional healing practices have changed and stayed the same from the 1920s to the early 2000s. This study examines the responses of Sukuma healers to enduring external pressures stemming from colonial medical policy, missionary efforts, postcolonial state initiatives, and the increasing prominence of biomedicine. It is part of a larger conversation about medical pluralism and systems of indigenous knowledge. The study uses a qualitative historical method that includes archival colonial and postcolonial health and administrative data, oral interviews with traditional healers and community elders, and a critical look at relevant secondary literature. This triangulated method lets us see how Sukuma healing practices have changed and stayed the same over time. The results show that the Sukuma's traditional healing was not only hurt by outside forces, but also changed through negotiation, adaptation, and selective inclusion. The article ends by saying that Sukuma traditional healing is very epistemically resilient, which goes against simple stories about how medicine is getting worse and more modern. It says that both historical research and current health policy frameworks should stop seeing "traditional" and "modern" medicine as opposites. Instead, they should see indigenous healers as active participants and valuable contributors to community-centered and pluralistic healthcare systems. Healers changed how they made diagnoses, changed how they thought about spiritual and herbal knowledge, and used biomedical discourses in a strategic way to keep their social legitimacy and therapeutic importance.