Developing the Alliances to Expand Traditional Indigenous Healing Practices Within Alberta Health Services.

Abstract

Indigenous people have unique health needs that require culturally appropriate holistic care that addresses physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Access to both traditional Indigenous healing practices and Western medicine are needed for all encompassing holistic health. This inquiry addresses actions suggested by the United Nations (UN) and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) with regard to traditional Indigenous medicine and healing and was guided by an Organizational Sponsor and Inquiry Team. The fieldwork for this study took place within Alberta Health Services (AHS), established in 2008 when 12 separate health entities merged to become Canada's first and largest fully integrated provincial health system. Two Elders and a Cultural Helper provided perspectives on cultural protocols surrounding the traditional Indigenous sweat lodge ceremony. Three Indigenous community members provided perspectives on AHS services and holistic health through participation in the traditional Indigenous sweat lodge ceremony. Seven AHS administrative employees provided perspectives on implementation. This study was conducted within an action research framework and the researcher conducted a literature review, interviews, and a focus group to allow for triangulation. Throughout the interviews and focus group, participants consistently emphasized the importance of increasing efforts to expand traditional Indigenous healing practices within AHS, giving rise to the primary study theme: Expanding Traditional Indigenous Healing Practices within AHS. Several subthemes emerged in support of this primary focus, including the following: (1) enhancing cultural competency and safety training among leadership and employees; (2) adhering to tradition and protocol; (3) establishing meaningful partnerships; (4) strengthening organizational facets of program delivery; and (5) need for additional financial, human, and logistical resources. During this time of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada and beyond, health care leaders and providers have an ethical responsibility and important opportunity to help improve the troubling health disparities at hand. This will inevitably require tremendous reflection, humility, courage, and commitment by stakeholders at all levels, as they work to transform health systems that disproportionately disadvantage Indigenous ways of knowing and being while implicitly privileging Eurocentric, biomedical perspectives. This pursuit, despite the barriers that may arise, is a moral, social, and political imperative for all those health care workers who seek to reduce suffering.