In the Fall of 2021, I challenged students in SCAR 2WW3: Health, Healing, and Religion, to consider the role of Indigenous knowledge practices within Canadian healthcare settings. The final project responded to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) call for curricular strategies to address Indigenous specific issues within university level professional programs. Students in 2WW3 are enrolled in a variety of professional programs, including Health Sciences and Nursing, or are pursing the “Health, Well-Being, and Religion” minor offered by the Department of Religious Studies. Given the focus on Experiential Learning at McMaster University, students applied their knowledge of health, healing, and religion to their broader academic and professional interests.
Putting themselves in the shoes of a healthcare professional (nurse, doctor, hospice worker), students created a training manual for their colleagues or for hospital administrators. They outlined some barriers to care for Indigenous, Métis, and Inuit patients and offered ways of integrating traditional healing practices within various healthcare settings. 2WW3 students, who come from diverse backgrounds, were not expected to “solve” the systemic inequalities of the Canadian healthcare system. Instead, they considered how various healthcare providers can foster safe and respectful environments for Indigenous patients by incorporating traditional spiritual practices and values, and suggesting ways of furthering the project of reconciliation through a politics of care.
Students also enacted a politics of care through their alternative world-making projects. Their projects were well researched, beautifully designed, and reflected care and compassion. While the goal of the assignment was inherently political, the goal of this blog post is to celebrate the hard work and creativity of the students. In what follows, I highlight a very small sampling of the submitted projects, in no particular order.
4th year Health Sciences students, Rhea Varghese and Zoe Tsai’s information booklet and accompanying 1 hour podcast titled SHADOWS OF CANADIAN HEALTH, highlights the major barriers to care faced by Indigenous Peoples. Issue 1 and Episode 1 of their booklet and podcast, titled Indigenous Health: An Etic Narrative, details the historical context of settler colonialism in Canada and some of the structural barriers within the health system, and calls attention to “Indigenous ways of knowing and methods of healing.”
Stevros of Langmar’s (this may or may not be their real name) 20 page manual is a “healthcare professional’s guide for fostering safe and respectful interactions during prenatal, natal and postnatal care of Aboriginal people.” A Social Sciences student, Stevros notes the violence of “medicalized births in geographically distant hospitals” given the history of traditional maternal care and family-assisted births prior to colonization.
*There are some formatting issues since this is meant to be read as a 2-page spread.
Erica Li, a 1st year Integrated Science student, explores the relationship between drug use and the healthcare sector in their project, titled A Culturally Appropriate and Supportive Approach to Indigenous Harm Reduction. Focusing on the past and present effects of colonialism, Li’s project proposes “ways in which healthcare professionals can create a culturally appropriate environment for patients accessing harm reduction services.”
A 2nd year Life Sciences student, with a minor in Indigenous Studies, Ainslie Unruh’s project is titled, Supporting Traditional Indigenous Healing in the Canadian Healthcare System: A Manual for Healthcare Workers. Unruh’s manual provides “healthcare workers with ideas [for] how they can foster a safer and more trusting space in the immediate future.” Their manual calls attention to the holistic nature of traditional Indigenous healing practices, and it includes four-step plan for fostering safe environments within healthcare settings: Create trust. Accept traditional practices. Relinquish control. Encourage holistic healing (CARE).
Lauren Walsh is a 5th year student completing a Commerce (Human Resources) degree with a Minor in Health, Aging, and Society. Lauren’s training manual, titled Integrating Indigenous Health Care Training Manual, is an educational tool for administrators and health care providers. Noting that their project is one tool within a broader educational mandate, Lauren’s manual presents “Barriers to health care faced by Indigenous Canadians [and] methods that Indigenous Canadians traditionally apply in the pursuit of health.“