scholarly journals A Medical Student's Perspective on "Fighting for a Hand to Hold"

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Joanne Wang
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Health ◽  
Health Centre ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Personal Reflection ◽  
Clinical Experiences ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Indigenous Children ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mcgill University

Fighting for a Hand to Hold by Dr. Samir Shaheen-Hussain is a heartbreaking and compelling read depicting the history of injustices, terror and trauma inflicted upon Indigenous children by the Canadian medical system. As an emergency pediatrician at the McGill University Health Centre and associate professor at McGill University, Dr. Shaheen-Hussain weaves his clinical experiences and long-standing advocacy efforts alongside archival research to shed insight on medical colonialism. This piece is structured in two parts: a book review followed by a personal reflection. It is accompanied by a podcast interview with Dr. Shaheen-Hussain in which he discusses his social justice work, his book, and advocacy advice for students in healthcare. This book review highlights the importance of Fighting for a Hand to Hold as a seminal piece of literature for all healthcare professionals and trainees across Canada. In the personal reflection, the author considers their own experiences with race and racism as a person of colour, settler Canadian, and medical student. This reflection concludes by advocating for more emphasis on Indigenous health in Canadian medical education and practice.

scholarly journals Aspirations and Worries: The Role of Parental Intrinsic Motivation in Establishing Oral Health Practices for Indigenous Children

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (21) ◽  
pp. 11695
Author(s):  
Brianna F. Poirier ◽  
Joanne Hedges ◽  
Lisa G. Smithers ◽  
Megan Moskos ◽  
Lisa M. Jamieson
Keyword(s):  
Oral Health ◽  
Indigenous Health ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Oral Disease ◽  
Health And Nutrition ◽  
Nutrition Practices ◽  
Indigenous Children ◽  
History Of ◽  
Health Programming

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (respectfully, subsequently referred to as Indigenous) children in Australia experience oral disease at a higher rate than non-Indigenous children. A history of colonisation, government-enforced assimilation, racism, and cultural annihilation has had profound impacts on Indigenous health, reflected in oral health inequities sustained by Indigenous communities. Motivational interviewing was one of four components utilised in this project, which aimed to identify factors related to the increased occurrence of early childhood caries in Indigenous children. This qualitative analysis represents motivational interviews with 226 participants and explores parents’ motivations for establishing oral health and nutrition practices for their children. Findings suggest that parental aspirations and worries underscored motivations to establish oral health and nutrition behaviours for children in this project. Within aspirations, parents desired for children to ‘keep their teeth’ and avoid false teeth, have a positive appearance, and preserve self-esteem. Parental worries related to child pain, negative appearance, sugar consumption, poor community oral health and rotten teeth. A discussion of findings results in the following recommendations: (1) consideration of the whole self, including mental health, in future oral health programming and research; (2) implementation of community-wide oral health programming, beyond parent-child dyads; and (3) prioritisation of community knowledge and traditions in oral health programming.

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

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