Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing
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Anishinaabeg women’s stories of wellbeing: Physical activity, restoring wellbeing, and dismantling the settler colonial deficit analysis
Get PDFThe settler colonial lens deficit approach to Indigenous peoples’ health constructs us as ill, which sets the stage for our eventual erasure. In contrast to this deficit-based approach, in this paper I employed an Anishinaabeg research paradigm and followed Anishinaabeg protocols to understand how Anishinaabeg women are creating wellbeing for themselves, their families, and communities through engaging in physical activity. Based on seven interviews with Anishinaabeg women who are engaged in decolonized physicality, the Anishinaabeg women participants promote gwesayjitodoon indo bimaadiziiwin, which means to transform oneself into a better life. The participants showed how if one can apply the concept of gwesayjitodoon indo bimaadiziiwin to his or her physical activity, it has potential to enact broader community wellbeing that can confront the settler colonial deficit lens that requires Indigenous peoples’ erasure, and through which Aboriginal health research has for too long been examined.
Matariki - Celebrations of the past and future
Get PDFJournal of Indigenous Wellbeing: Te Mauri – Pimatisiwin Patron, Barry Bublitz heralds the Māori new year 'Matariki'. Changes within the Editorial Board and the future plans of the Healing our Spirit Worldwide movement are also shared
Editorial
Get PDFAliwa! Kwobidjil Yoowal Nidjak KoorlinyHey - Watch Out! Things are moving - the best is coming hereKia rite! Kia rite! Kia mau! Tukua!Get ready! Line up! Steady! Release!Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing: Te Mauri – Pimatisiwin Guest Editor & Editorial Board Member Professor Pat Dudgeon together with the Managing Editor Dr Kahu McClintock introduce Volume 2, Issue 2; the Indigenous Suicide Prevention Special Edition
The context and causes of the suicide of Indigenous people in Australia
Get PDFWhen comparing suicide in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) population to that in the non-Indigenous populations of Australia, there are significant differences in the rates of suicide and the age groups at risk of suicide. The etiology of these differences includes a history of colonisation and its aftermath including a burden of intergenerational trauma in the Indigenous population. It also includes contemporary disadvantage and discrimination. These not only impact on Indigenous family and community life but also on potential sources of social and emotional wellbeing and resilience that help protect Indigenous individuals against suicide. They also result in the greater exposure of Indigenous families and individuals to trauma, and other risk factors associated with suicide. Further, they underpin those families and individual’s lower access to culturally appropriate mental health and suicide prevention services and programs. Although there is a degree of commonality between the specific causes associated with the suicide of Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals, the burden and the accumulation of underlying trauma, risk factors and specific causes in the case of Indigenous individuals results in higher rates of suicide. The increasing Indigenous suicide rate suggests that the overall current approach to Indigenous suicide prevention is not working. Innovative Indigenous community-led, strengths based approaches should be supported in the context of a different national approach. This includes, in addition to targeted responses to Indigenous individuals and population groups at risk of suicide, empowering communities to address their challenges, including those associated with suicide. It includes empowering communities to heal intergenerational trauma at the individual, family, community-level. It includes strengthening culture and sources of resilience to protect against suicide at the community level
What the people said: Findings from the regional Roundtables of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project
Get PDFThis paper summarises key findings from the six community regional Roundtables that were undertaken as part of the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project. The six community regional Roundtables were held in different locations across the country. Common themes emerging included the need for self-determination and local leadership, the need to consider the social determinants of health, the need to address trauma, the role and impact of incarceration and justice issues and the need for culture and identity to be strengthened
Editorial
Get PDFJournal of Indigenous Wellbeing: Te Mauri – Pimatisiwin Managing Editor Dr Kahu McClintock introduces Volume 2, Issue 3
“You are here because the land called you”: Searching for vivir bien/living well
Get PDFThis paper provides an account of an education seminar titled “When Indigenous People Lead,” inspired by the decolonisation work being conducted by the first Indigenous president of a colonial nation-state in the Western Hemisphere, President Evo Morales of Bolivia. The purpose of the seminar was to bring Indigenous peoples and allies to Bolivia to examine the strategies used by the Morales government to dismantle the stranglehold that settler colonialism and capitalism have had on their country. Our goal was a single seminar to examine the implications of the Morales government for Indigenous peoples, who envision similar change in their homelands. This study examines our journey of searching for vivir bien - living well - through a theoretical lens of decolonisation and ecosocialism directed toward alternatives to socially and ecologically destructive systems. We chose ecosocialism as the framework to examine and deconstruct Morales’s work because ecosocialism strongly supports Indigenous ways of knowing, but it also argues that the alienation from nature is directly related to alienation from each other, and this in turn causes environmental degradation with capitalism at the core of this planetary issue
Towards healthier Indigenous health policies? Navigating the labyrinth for answers
Get PDFThis research is based on two years of community-based participatory research that draws on Indigenous understandings of health policy in five First Nations in Ontario, Canada. While a number of policies have been put in place to increase Indigenous control over community health services, we argue that policies enacted to promote Indigenous self-determination in health care have been counterproductive and detrimental to Indigenous health and wellbeing. Instead, we suggest that Indigenous health policy exists on a continuum and aim to balance the need for including diverse Indigenous groups with comprehensive control from program funding and design to implementation. This poses some difficult questions: How do Indigenous peoples perceive the concept of self-determination, community-controlled health care and the efforts of the Canadian government to form collaborative arrangements between Indigenous communities, organisations and government? What does an inclusive and comprehensive Indigenous community-controlled health care system look like? The purpose of this article is to explore how Indigenous people and community stakeholders in Canada understand terms such as self-determination and health and draw conclusions about collaborative efforts between the government and Indigenous communities to support community-controlled health care. It further explores participant narratives and describes their experiences, particularly, the strengths and weaknesses of community-government health policy developments
Weaving past, present, and future
Get PDFRecently appointed Editorial Board Chair, Professor Brendan Hokowhitu presents his first Editorial for the Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing: Te Mauri – Pimatisiwin. His philosophical discussion weaves together the past, present and future considering the idea of Indigenous wellbeing
Indigenous suicide: The Turamarama Declaration
Get PDFAcross the globe suicide has become a major public health concern. Indigenous suicide rates have escalated over the past two decades and continue to exceed national rates. In 2016, a Māori tribal organisation, Ngāti Pikiao, convened an international conference, Turamarama ki te Ora, to discuss global approaches to the prevention of suicide. To bring together the many aspects of suicide prevention, a Declaration was presented and subsequently endorsed by Conference delegates. The Turamarama Declaration acknowledged the grief associated with suicide, recognised avenues to promote indigenous resilience, identified opportunities to decrease risks to suicide, and challenged local, national, and international authorities to take definitive measures to reduce indigenous suicide. The Declaration also encouraged indigenous people to work together to provide an integrated response and collective, networked leadership