Beyond the Social Determinants of Health

Laura Hall,Tanya Shute,Urpi Pine

doi:10.28984/drhj.v3i0.302

Laura Hall, Tanya Shute + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.28984/drhj.v3i0.302

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Abstract

Abstract This paper will reflect on key findings from a Summer 2017 initiative entitled The Role of Culture and Land-Based Healing in Addressing and Ending Violence against Indigenous Women and Two-Spirited People. The Indigenist and decolonizing methodological approach of this work ensured that all research was grounded in experiential and reciprocal ways of learning. Two major findings guide the next phase of this research, complicating the premise that traditional economic activities are healing for Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people. First, the complexities of the mainstream labour force were raised numerous times. Traditional economies are pressured in ongoing ways through exploitative labour practices. Secondly, participants emphasized the importance of attending to the responsibility of nurturing, enriching, and sustaining the wellbeing of soil, water, and original seeds in the process of creating renewal gardens as a healing endeavour. In other words, we have an active role to play in healing the environment and not merely using the environment to heal ourselves. Gardening as research and embodied knowledge was stressed by extreme weather changes including hail in June, 2018, which meant that participants spent as much time talking about the healing of the earth and her systems as the healing of Indigenous women in a context of ongoing colonialism.

Highlights

This research initiative, involving researchers and community members associated with the 7 Directions Learning Centre, known as the Painted Corn Collective, took place in the Summer of 2017 and focused on gardening as a way of addressing and resisting violence against Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people
While this research initiative started with an approach toward ending violence against Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people, we did not, engage with discussions about colonial violence as a central focus
We argue two points: first, that Indigenous health and healing requires an approach that moves beyond the social determinants of health toward an understanding rooted in Indigenous Knowledge for which ‘social’ determinants are inclusive of environment and culturally rooted analysis of wellbeing

Summary

Introduction

This research initiative, involving researchers and community members associated with the 7 Directions Learning Centre, known as the Painted Corn Collective (or PCC for the remainder of this paper), took place in the Summer of 2017 and focused on gardening as a way of addressing and resisting violence against Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people. We argue two points: first, that Indigenous health and healing requires an approach that moves beyond the social determinants of health toward an understanding rooted in Indigenous Knowledge for which ‘social’ determinants are inclusive of environment (or Creation) and culturally rooted analysis of wellbeing. Ending violence against Indigenous women is essential to improving health for all Indigenous people, and that this conversation is one in need of expansion beyond the bounds of nation-state and settler colonial containment. The renewal and return of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people to land and culture is an ongoing push-back against the structures of settler colonialism that maintain Euro-Canadian dominance over land. Trauma-rooted illnesses are understood in Indigenous Knowledg e systems to be roote d in stress and grief, combining mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health with intergenerational and life-long effects of ongoing colonization (Cook, 2015). Gender based violence has remained essential to the project of colonization as a direct assault on the power and responsibilities of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people

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