Honoring Indigenous Sacred Places and Spirit in Environmental Health

Abstract

Indigenous Peoples and their deep knowledges offer a fundamentally important way of seeing the world and the environment. Through relationships to distinct ancestral homelands, Indigenous Peoples have developed unique ways of surviving, adapting, connecting, and relating to their respective environments. Indigenous Sacred Places themselves are connections to ancestors, to all beings on the planet, and to different planes of existence. Sacred Places serve an important environmental role in many Indigenous Nations around the globe. Yet, Indigenous Sacred Places, and in particular understandings of spirit that connect Sacred Places, have been historically and contemporarily marginalized and excluded from environmental health academic discourse and spaces. This despite concrete calls for the amplification of Indigenous traditional knowledges—that of which does not separate spirit from knowledge, or spirit from action—they are intertwined. With this, we sought to amplify in this Perspective, understandings and connectivity between Sacred Places, spirit, and environmental health through the stories from Indigenous Elders, processes of ceremony, and personal synthesis.

Ecospirituality and Health: A Systematic Review

“…Appendix 1 outlines the results of the MMAT quality appraisal of the individual studies. One study was identified as a mixed method (Nawrath et al, 2022 ), nine as qualitative studies (Bellehumeur et al, 2022 ; Lestar & Böhm, 2020 ; Cloud & Redvers, 2023 ; Denis et al, 2022 ; Hategan, 2021 ; Keaulana et al, 2021 ; Skoko et al, 2021 ; Nalau et al, 2018 ; Oberholzer-Dent et al, 2023 ), and four as quantitative studies (Kras & Keenan, 2020 ; Oliveira et al, 2022 ; Vitorino et al, 2018 ; Walls et al, 2022 ). All included studies addressed both screening questions, stated the research aims, and justified the findings to answer the research questions.…”

“…The relationship with nature must include an exchange in which every time the environment gives us something, we give it back in another way, thus establishing a spiritual connection. The belief of many indigenous people is that everything in the universe is related and that is why all “energy” comes and goes forming a circle (Cloud & Redvers, 2023 ).…”

“…They demonstrate the link between nature and improved health at all levels. With ecospirituality understood from the indigenous sphere, environmental health can be achieved, thereby achieving global health in populations as a direct consequence (Cloud & Redvers, 2023 ; Keaulana et al, 2021 ). The cosmovision of indigenous peoples can illuminate our ecospirituality, something that the capitalist and extractivist systems will never understand.…”

“… Is the interpretation of results sufficiently substantiated by data? Do the different components of the study adhere to the quality criteria of each tradition of the methods involved Bellehumeuret al ( 2022 ) 3/5 Yes Yes Yes No Cannot tell Cloud and Redvers ( 2023 ) 3/5 Yes Yes Yes No Cannot tell Denis et al ( 2022 ) 4/5 Yes No Yes No Yes Hategan ( 2021 ) 5/5 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Keaulana et al ( 2021 ) 5/5 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Lestar and Böhm ( 2020 ) 3/5 Yes Yes Yes No Cannot tell Nalau et al ( 2018 ) 3/5 Yes Yes Yes No Cannot tell Oberholzer-Dent et al ( 2023 ) ...…”

Reporting evidence on the environmental and health impacts of climate change on Indigenous Peoples of Atlantic Canada: a systematic review

“…The review showed that climate change enhanced multiple processes of vulnerability specific to Indigenous Peoples, as well as providing more indirect and intangible mental health evidence [124]. Indigenous perspectives of the world are holistic in nature and that the whole is considered to be alive with Spirit that requires respect and reverence, because all life has a place in the Sacred Hoop of Life, which many call the Medicine Wheel [125]. The Medicine Wheel is a teaching tool used by many North American Indigenous cultures in Knowledge Translation/transmission [126].…”