Indigenous Relationality and Kinship and the Professionalization of a Health Workforce

Abstract

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.