Honouring the truth, reconciling for the future: Summary of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Source: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

Year: 2015

Canada’s residential school system for Aboriginal children was an education system in name only for much of its existence. These residential schools were created for the purpose of separating Aboriginal children from their families, in order to minimize and weaken family ties and cultural linkages, and to indoctrinate children into a new culture—the culture of the legally dominant Euro-Christian Canadian society, led by Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. The schools were in existence for well over 100 years, and many successive generations of children from the same communities and families endured the experience of them. That experience was hidden for most of Canada’s history, until survivors of the system were finally able to find the strength, courage, and support to bring their experiences to light in several thousand court cases that ultimately led to the largest class-action lawsuit in Canada’s history.

The Right to Food and Indigenous Peoples

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Year: 2008

Indigenous peoples, like everyone else, have a right to adequate food and a fundamental right to be free from hunger. This is stipulated in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) of 1966 and constitutes binding international law. This means states parties to the ICESCR are obliged to implement the right to food domestically, ensuring that it becomes part of their national legal system. The right to food entitles every person to an economic, political, and social environment that will allow them to achieve food security in dignity through their own means. Individuals or groups who do not have the capacity to meet their food needs for reasons beyond their control, such as illness, discrimination, age, unemployment, economic downturn, or natural disaster, are entitled to be provided with food directly. The obligation to ensure a minimum level necessary to be free from hunger is one of immediate effect.

Social Determinants of Health Inequities in Indigenous Canadians Through a Life Course Approach to Colonialism and the Residential School System

Source: Paul Kim

Year: 2019

Indigenous populations in Canada have experienced social, economic, and political disadvantages through colonialism. The policies implemented to assimilate Aboriginal peoples have dissolved cultural continuity and unfavourably shaped their health outcomes. As a result, Indigenous Canadians face health inequities such as chronic illness, food insecurity, and mental health crises.

Culture and language as a social determinants of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit health

Source: National Collaborating Center for Indigenous Health

Year: 2016

Culture is a dynamic and adaptive system of meaning that is learned, shared, and transmitted from one generation to the next and is reflected in the values, norms, practices, symbols, ways of life, and other social interactions of a given culture (Krueter & McClure, 2004). It is the foundation of both individual and collective identity, and its erosion can adversely affect mental health and well-being, leading to depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and even suicide (Kirmayer, Brass, & Tait, 2000). Language is “a conveyor of culture” (Ibid., p. 613) and the means by which knowledge, skills, and cultural values are expressed and maintained.

Type 2 Diabetes and Indigenous Peoples – Supporting a Culturally Safe and Self-Determined Journey

Source: Rebecca Sovdi and Jessica Guss

Year: 2020

This 60-minute webinar focuses on type 2 diabetes and Indigenous Peoples in BC. Thought leaders Rebecca Sovdi and Jessica Guss draw on evidence and lived experience to provide the context and understanding required to effectively support Indigenous peoples on a culturally safe and self-determined journey.

Honoring our Strengths: Culture as Intervention

Source: Thunderbird Partnership Foundation, the University of Saskatchewan, the Assembly of First Nations, and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Year: n.d.

This Reference Guide shares key concepts gathered from the study: Definition of Culture, Definition of Wellness, Indigenous Wellness Framework, and Common Cultural Interventions.

Cultural continuity, traditional Indigenous language, and diabetes in Alberta First Nations: a mixed methods study

Source: Richard Oster, Angela Grier, Rick Lightning, Maria Mayan, Ellen Toth

Year: 2014

Cultural continuity, or “being who we are”, is foundational to health in successful First Nations. Self-determination, or “being a self-sufficient Nation”, stems from cultural continuity and is seriously compromised in today’s Alberta Cree and Blackfoot Nations. Unfortunately, First Nations are in a continuous struggle with government policy. The intergenerational effects of colonization continue to impact the culture, which undermines the sense of self-determination, and contributes to diabetes and ill health.

Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: The role of Indigenous knowledge in supporting wellness in Inuit communities in Nunavut

Source: Shirley Tagalik; National Collaborating Center for Indigenous Health

Year: 2010

Indigenous worldviews are generally holistic in perspective and encompass interconnections amongst all aspects of life and place (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005). From this interconnected view of the universe, a sense of cultural identity, collective purpose and belonging is derived. Cultural wellbeing relies on the individual becoming situated within a cultural worldview. For Inuit, being grounded in Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit supports personal wellness, but also contributes to a collective cultural sense of health and wellness which has sustained Inuit over generations. Inuit Elders in Nunavut are documenting Inuit worldview so that the strengths which have always sustained them will still be available to future generations.

Social Determinants of Health: Understanding Racism

Source: Charlotte Reading; National Collaborating Center for Indigenous Health

Year: 2013

This fact sheet is the first of three that will focus on anti-Indigenous racism in Canada, beginning with an exploration of the concept of race, its history and contexts, and continuing with a discussion of the various forms of racism within societies. In order to address racism in Canadian society, we must first understand what racism is, how it became a way to identify people, and the forms it takes.

Why bringing traditional food into Haida Gwaii hospitals and schools matters

Source: National Observer
Date: Feb 2021

A story about her father and his hatred of beets continues to remind Elizabeth Moore why bringing traditional food and teaching to her home of Haida Gwaii is so important.

"Hunger was never absent": How residential school diets shaped current patterns of diabetes among Indigenous peoples in Canada

Source: Mosby, I. & Galloway, T. CMAJ 2017 August 14;189:E1043-5. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.170448
Year: 2017

One of the most consistent themes in testimony provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was the common experience of hunger at residential schools. In his statement to the TRC, survivor Andrew Paul spoke of the unrelenting hunger he experienced during his time at Aklavik Roman Catholic Residential School: “We cried to have something good to eat before we sleep. A lot of the times the food we had was rancid, full of maggots, stink. Sometimes we would sneak away from school to go visit our aunts or uncles, just to have a piece of bannock."

First Peoples, Second Class Treatment: The role of racism in the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples in Canada

Source: Wellesley Institute
Year: 2017

First Peoples, Second Class Treatment explores the role of racism in the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples in Canada. We begin with an overview of the historical and contemporary contexts of racism, and the ways in which racism is fundamentally responsible for the alarming disparities in health between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. We examine Indigenous responses to racism including individual, family and community level strategies and resiliencies; health service-level responses (including Indigenous and non-Indigenous led services); efforts directed at the training of health professionals; and provincial, territorial and national-level policies and recommendations.