Developing an Indigenous goal-setting tool: Counting Coup

Chronic illness self-management best practices include goal-setting as an important tool for developing better self-management habits and are often included as elements of chronic disease self-management interventions. However, the goal theory that many of these tools employ relies on individualistic principles of self-efficacy that are not culturally consonant within many Indigenous communities. During the creation of the [blinded] program, a chronic illness management intervention, we developed a goal-setting tool specific to the [blinded] Nation. Emerging from an Indigenous paradigm and methodology, Counting Coup serves as a goal-setting tool that promotes the [blinded] culture, connects individuals with their ancestors, and focuses on achievement of goals within relationships. Future research and practice should be grounded in the historical and cultural contexts of their communities when designing and implementing goal-setting tools. Limitations to Counting Coup as a goal-setting tool include the need for program facilitators to have a relationship with participants due to Counting Coup’s foundation in relational accountability and that the environmental context may pose difficulties for participants in moving towards behavior change.

Indigenous Epistemologies, Worldviews and Theories of Power

The purpose of the study is to understand Indigenous epistemologies of power from the standpoint of Indigenous participants who are originally from or currently living in the Sudbury and Manitoulin Island areas of Ontario, Canada. Indigenous research methods are privileged throughout, and key aspects of grounded theory are woven in to add support. Comparisons between the Indigenous epistemological concept of power and the Western theories of power of mainstream academia are made, as are relevant criticisms of Western epistemology. Fifteen Indigenous participants were interviewed. The central category that arose from the data is, relationships. This central category ties the other main categories together which are: language, sacred sources of power, Indigenous women, abuse of power, and knowledge. The findings indicate that there are many forms and manifestations of power which are related to each other. The source of power is in the interrelatedness of everyone to everything else that is known and unknown. Humility, harmony and balanced relationships produce the healthiest and most magnificent manifestations of power. The paper argues that understanding more about epistemologies of power will help illuminate a pathway by which Indigenous peoples and Canadians of settler ancestry can better understand one another, creating the shift in these relationships that is required in order to gather large-scale support for reconciliation and for ethical distribution of power resources in Canada.

Reimagining Indigenous spaces of healing: Institutional environmental repossession

Among the global Indigenous population, concepts of health and healthy living are wholistically intertwined within social, physical, natural, and spiritual systems. On-going processes of colonization and experiences of environmental dispossession have had the effect of removing Indigenous peoples from the lands, people and knowledge systems that have traditionally promoted their health. In 2014, Big-Canoe and Richmond introduced the idea of environmental repossession. This concept refers to the social, economic, and cultural processes Indigenous people are engaging in to reconnect with their traditional lands and territories, the wider goal being to assert their rights as Indigenous people and to improve their health and well-being. As Indigenous mothers, both who live in urban centres “away” from our families and traditional lands and knowledge systems, we engage with this conceptual model as a hopeful way to reimagine relationships to land, family, and knowledge. We embrace the concept of environmental repossession, and its key elements – land, social relationships, Indigenous knowledge – as a framework for promoting health and healing spaces among those who live “away” from their traditional territory. Drawing on three examples, an urban hospital, a university food and medicine garden, and a men’s prison, we suggest that these spaces do indeed offer important structural proxies for land, social relationships, and Indigenous knowledge, and can be important healing spaces. With increasingly urbanizing Indigenous populations in Canada, and around the world, these findings are important for the development of healing places for Indigenous peoples, regardless of where they live.

Wii Niiganabying (Looking Ahead):

Fifty years ago, Indigenous elders and leaders drafted their response to the Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy (White Paper of 1969). Their formal rebuttal, Citizens Plus (Red Paper), published in 1970, was a turning point in Indigenous education policy. It marked the beginning of the shift away from government-controlled, assimilationist educational policies to greater Indigenous control over funding and pedagogical methods. The Red Paper refuted the White Paper’s main conclusions and stated that Indigenous peoples are “citizens plus” because the federal government is legally bound to provide Indigenous peoples with services in exchange for the use of the land they occupy. The most important Indigenous rights to be upheld included education, health care, Aboriginal status, and Aboriginal title. These unique rights recognized that Indigenous peoples are the original owners of all the natural resources on their traditional treaty lands. The Red Paper became a political turning point for Indigenous peoples in Canada by presenting an Indigenous vision for a new political and legal relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples based on Aboriginal and treaty rights. Since the 1970s, Indigenous leaders have struggled to maintain control of educational funding while having to abide by provincial standards of educational curricula. Indigenous communities want to provide more positive learning experiences and positive identity through reconceptualizing educational curricula. They are exploring ways to indigenize the educational experience by igniting cultural resurgence through the integration of Indigenous languages, knowledge, culture, and history by reconnecting students to their elders, land, and communities.

Indigenous Relationality and Kinship and the Professionalization of a Health Workforce

We, as a group of academic learners, argue the professionalization of healthcare service providers reinforces hierarchies of knowledge that results in the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples. Through decolonizing theory and Indigenous methodology, we applied Indigenous understandings of relationality and kinship to examine the professionalization of the health workforce. Relationality is a philosophy that describes the interconnections between all of creation and kinship consists of family, community, and all extended human and more-than-human relations. Indigenous health knowledges reflect relationality and kinship and are practiced by midwives, doulas, and Comadronas. Within the Euro-Western biomedical model, these healers are often incorporated into maternity care services for the purposes of professionalizing their roles. Professionalization, however, reinforces power differentiations between healthcare providers and advances biomedical hegemony and hierarchies of knowledge, all of which exclude Indigenous kinship and relationality. The dangers of professionalization of the health workforce result in the omission of Indigenous knowledges, because the Euro-Western biomedical model of health is built on the philosophies of colonialism and capitalism. To counter professionalization, Indigenous relationality and kinship must be prioritized in the provision of healthcare so that it is inclusive to Indigenous Peoples and their knowledges, the results of which will benefit us all.

Baawaajige

Baawaajige: my ideas for research are often revealed while sleeping. We as Anishinaabe People are able to connect to the spiritual realm through dreams. I will explore how Anishinaabe People utilize dreams and validate Indigenous ways of knowing without feeling shy and to be proud of where we obtain our knowledge. We need to normalize our dreams and visions within our writing. My conference presentation explores the use of dreams in academic writing as validated research. I want to privilege Indigenous research method and methodology that appears within our dreams, visions, and through fasting. How do we reference these in our academic writing? How do we provide context to such intimate moments between us and the Spirit World? How do we honour that knowledge in colonial academic papers? I will explore these questions while contributing to Indigenous research methods, and methodologies.

Enacting the Otipemisiwak Worldview

Applying one’s cultural teachings to their research or clinical practice is an important endeavour that requires intensive reflexivity. I recently had the honour of studying in detail my Métis or Otipemisiwak culture by taking a class called Advanced Métis Studies taught by a respected Métis Elder. In this article, I document some specific learnings from the course, and reflect on how to apply them to both my occupational therapy clinical practice and my research praxis as a PhD student. I offer specific and more theoretical applications of Otipemisiwak culture to my life and encourage the reader to engage in a similar reflexive process regarding their own culture. This article also serves as a chance to introduce myself to other Indigenous health researchers.

Editorial

The creation of the Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health (TIJIH) emerged out of conversations in 2018 between an Indigenous professor1 and non-Indigenous graduate students working within Indigenous health research at the University of Toronto. TIJIH was intended to connect graduate students, Indigenous scholars, and Indigenous communities into a platform for work that focused on Indigenous health. The idea has since morphed into the establishment of a peer-reviewed journal and an accompanying Community of Practice (CoP) where people with an interest in Indigenous health can discuss, collaborate, and co-learn.