Aircraft Noise and the Practice of Indian Medicine: The Symbolic Transformation of the Environment

An epistemological and theoretical framework is developed for use in sociocultural impact assessment (SIA). This framework is based on the necessity of understanding the symbols and meanings by which a group of people transforms the nonhuman environment symbolically into meaningful sociocultural phenomena. The framework is applied to an SIA of the effects on the practice of Indian medicine among a Native American people that would result from low-altitude military aircraft noise. The impacts to Indian patients are very different from the impacts to non-Indian patients of a practicing medicine woman because of the symbols and meanings of medicine to Indian patients. The benefits to be gained from this framework in the practice of SIA are discussed.