As a country that is allegedly dedicated to reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples, closing the gap in knowledge that health-care professionals have regarding Indigenous wellness practices must be a priority to end oppressive facets of our health-care system. A first step towards creating a culturally understanding environment would be making cultural competency training courses mandatory for those wishing to enter the medical field.
The colonial structure of the health-care system that aimed to assimilate Indigenous peoples into the Euro-Canadian culture is largely responsible for Indigenous health disparities. In Canada, research shows the infant mortality rate of Indigenous children is approximately four times the non-Indigenous average. Indigenous peoples have diabetes twice the rate of non-Indigenous Canadians, and the overall suicide rate among First Nation communities is about twice that of the total Canadian population.
Additionally, there is a significant gap in the number of Indigenous health professionals available to serve their communities, with only 1.2 per cent of the health-care workforce in Canada being Indigenous, while Indigenous people make up almost five per cent of the total population.
The lack of health-care professionals that are knowledgeable about Indigenous cultural practices—as well as how Indigenous peoples have historically been excluded from the quality of health-care white Canadians can expect to receive—has promoted a culturally unsafe environment, and created a severe lack of health-care resources for them as a result.
Health-care professionals should not only be familiar with the history of Indigenous mistreatment by the system they represent, but should also know the importance of incorporating the cultural differences between Indigenous and western medicine into their interactions with Indigenous patients. This can only be done through education, and that education should be incorporated into existing health-care curriculums through specialized courses.
Last year, many Canadians were startled by the tragic death of Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw mother, who recorded hospital workers making racist comments and allegedly ignoring her when she asked for help shortly before her death. For many, was a far-too-late wake up call to the systematic racism that exists in our healthcare system.
In 2017, a survey of Canadian health professionals found that 51 per cent of participants believed that race-based discrimination against Indigenous people was present in their organization. Only one-third said they had an Indigenous cultural safety commitment unit within their health care organization. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has been calling for mandatory cultural competency training for all health-care professionals since 2015, yet few steps have been made by health-care organizations to meet this call to action.
As Canadians, we often boast about our universal health-care system—one that is widely considered among the best in the world—and in doing so, we continue to ignore the inequalities embedded within the system.
Health care is meant to be available in equal quality to everyone, and Indigenous peoples should not be excluded from this. We should not be prideful of a system that discriminates and lacks knowledge of certain cultural practices and wellness, as that would render us prideful of a system that is incomplete, inadequate and far from progressive expectations of proper medical treatment. Cultural competency training for health-care professionals should no longer be a rarity—at this point, it is the bare minimum.
Featured graphic from file.
