One Voice Medicine: Conversations with First Peoples Healers by Valerie Albrecht

Much ancient wisdom is to be found in Valerie Albrecht's One Voice Medicine. For over a decade Valerie conducted conversations with traditional First Nations healers and she brings them to us more or less as transcribed in this photograph-rich text.The conversation sites in this book are the Western Desert, Central Desert, Warburton, The Pilbara, New South Wales (Dubbo), and Central Australia.Valerie's purpose is to share her learnings with and teachings from First Nations peoples of ways to approach service provision. The text includes the advice and desires of First Nations healers with particular reference to listening, mutuality, Country and language. Valerie also relates her experiences of and in the landscape. Whilst remaining highly accessible, the writing is evocative when descriptions of Country and Valerie's responses to it are given. There is also a comprehensive academic rationale and bibliography.The book is illustrated with many landscape photographs, mostly taken by the author during her extensive travels. Elegantly rendered maps by Bec Jones assist the reader in locating the sites of conversations.The author's meticulous approach to this field research work and her multiple consultations with First Nations people have resulted in a work of great practical value and of refined visual beauty.Rita Metzenrath, librarian, Indigenous rights activist and author (with Samantha Faulkner) of Big Sickness Come Ailan, describes the book as 'a ground-breaking call for Indigenous healing practices to be comprehensively incorporated in health, medicine, education, employment and justice.'One Voice Medicine provides rare insight into why it is vital for Western practitioners to embrace First People's healing knowledge. It is testament to the author's expertise and commitment to what has been a decades long quest to listen to traditional healers around the world and to bring their wisdom to a contemporary reading public.