This article discusses transformations underway within Indigenous health in northern British Columbia and Canada. We highlight two organizations that are working to create ethical space and cultural safety at the intersections of Indigenous knowledge about health and wellness, Western medicine, and healthcare services for Indigenous peoples in Canada. The article argues that the cultural, organizational, and systemic transformations necessary to address the deep and ongoing health inequities experienced by Indigenous populations should be rooted in Indigenous knowledges and should prioritize Indigenous voices, values, and concepts. Cultural safety, ethical space, and Two-Eyed Seeing are three examples of ideas anchored in Indigenous knowledges that speak to relationships at the interface of different systems of knowledge. We offer some examples of how a public health knowledge translation centre and a regional health service delivering organization are actualizing these concepts in their work nationally and regionally in northern British Columbia, Canada.
This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.Abstract: This commentary explores the relationships between land, knowledge, and health for Indigenous peoples. Indigenous knowledge is fundamentally relational, linked to the land, language and the intergenerational transmission of songs, ceremonies, protocols, and ways of life. Colonialism violently disrupted relational ways, criminalizing cultural practices, restricting freedom of movement, forcing relocation, removing children from families, dismantling relational worldviews, and marginalizing Indigenous lives. However, Indigenous peoples have never been passive in the face of colonialism. Now more than ever, Indigenous knowledge in three critical areas-food and water security, climate change, and health-is needed for self-determination and collective survival in a rapidly changing world. (Global Health Promotion, 2019; 26(Supp. 3): 82-86)
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