November 20, 2020
Indigenous Healing: Strategies of Health and Dissent
The most important thing to remember about ceremony is that it is a way for human to give back to the Creation some of the energy that they are always receiving. The Earth Mother constantly gives us two-leggeds a surface on which to place our two feet; Father Sun warms us, and Grandmother Moon brings dreams. The element of Earth gives us a place to grow food and the ability to make homes and tools. The water keeps us alive. The fire warms our homes and cooks our food. The air gives us the sacred breath of life. Through ceremony, we learn how to give back. —Sun Bear, Anishinaabe Nation1 If the land is not healthy, how can we be? —Joseph Masty Sr.2
To understand the importance of ceremonies surrounding the sweat lodge, smudging, tobacco altogether, we must explore the meaning of health through Indigenous thought and a “relational worldview.”3 It is characterized by the harmony and balance of mind, body, and spirit with the natural environment.4
Naomi Adelson notes in “Health and the Politics of Cree Well-being” that there is no word in Cree that directly translates to English as health.5 The term used most often is miyupimaatisiiun, which translates to “living well” or “being alive well.” Among the Anishinaabe people, wellness is expressed in living mino biimadisiwin (the good life).6 While different tribes describe it with other terms, at its core, it is a philosophy about “being in step with the universe and with its sacred rhythms.”7 It is the idea that living in a balanced way centrally supports healthy living.
Michael Tlanusta Garrett et al. describes the purifying sweat lodge ceremony as a practice of Ayeli or “coming to center.”8 One seeks to remedy any disharmony or “dis-ease”9 by finding our unique place, sense of belonging, and identity in relation to a larger complex system. To do so, one must engage with the spiritual forces of the four essential elements of life, represented by the four compass directions, symbolizing the four dimensions of life.
Fire, Earth, Water, Wind East belonging and spirit through care and connection with others South inner mastery and connection with environment and context West self-awareness, self-reliance, and self-discipline North generosity and openness
In contrast to the normative Western perspective, this process of self-actualization is deeply embedded in geography:10 space, place, and a community network. Within an Indigenous perspective that holds the land and community in the highest esteem, this articulation of wellness draws upon natural relations and cultural values that extend beyond the physical state of the body.11 It challenges the limiting framework of Western biology, where the body is reduced solely to a subject for medical concern and scrutiny. Health is never simply the absence of disease or illness.[12]
Health is complex. Health exists only when one’s relational world is truly in balance or harmony. It is inseparable from community, history, identity, and ultimately resistance, and thus, cannot be divorced from its sociocultural, political, or historical contexts.
Colonial Presence, Control, Displacement
The connection between land, identity, and health emphasizes how the disruption of Indigenous culture through colonization has had and continues to have negative health implications for Indigenous peoples, as the politics of land become mediated through the treatment of the body.13
It is without a doubt that Canada’s settler-colonial history presently impacts and shapes the realities of Indigenous people in contemporary times. Through severing social connections, displacement of land rights and dispossession of land ownership, assimilation through education, and eradicating social, cultural and spiritual practices,14 a systematic restructuring has created an environment of inequality for Indigenous peoples. Oscillating between elimination and exploitation, this ongoing structure of domination has resulted in numerous sustained inequities and disparities in almost every domain of Indigenous life.
In “Indigenous Ecohumanist Architecture for Health in Canada’s Far North”, Stephen Verderber et. al. translate these disparities into an observation of healthcare facilities in Indigenous communities of Canada’s northern regions:15 Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Government-imposed policies that control and dictate the dissemination of healthcare highlight the biopolitics of health perpetuated by the legacy of colonization.
At a foundational level, the Western colonial project that upholds the biomedical interpretation of health suppresses, erodes and delegitimizes the healing benefits of ceremony, access to land, social relationships, and Indigenous knowledge. Consequently, Indigenous communities are coerced into assimilating into a culturally foreign worldview in order to receive basic treatments.
The pivotal 2002 Romanow Report on the future of Canada’s health system highlighted the significant inequity in the management and facilitation of aboriginal health, suggesting an opportunity for inclusion: “The health system must (now) reflect the values, needs and expectations of all Canadians, including Canada’s aboriginal peoples.”16 Ongoing reconciliation discussions and partnerships were suggested to address the cultural disconnect between colonial healthcare environments and the necessity for Indigenous, decolonial health and healing strategies.17
The result has been a wide recognition among Indigenous peoples and scholars that strategies of health can be strategies of dissent. For Adelson and the Whapmagoostui Cree, “being alive well” connects individual bodies to a dynamic balancing of power between the sovereign, the disenfranchised group, and the individual.18 Links are being formed between health, land, cultural assertion, and resistance in the face of continued colonial presence.
Towards Decolonization
How do we, as citizen architects, begin to implement these strategies of health? How do we support this movement of “environmental repossession”?19 How do we facilitate these steps towards decolonization?
As Garrett et al. clearly show through the telling of the sweat lodge ceremony’s origins, Indigenous health and healing have traditionally been promoted through land-based ceremony, rooted in the symbiotic relations between Indigenous peoples and their ecosystems. Verderber et. al. reframe this environmental reverence into the contemporary notion of “ecohumanism” -- a movement that recognizes environments as simultaneously supporting and fostering behavioural, sociocultural, and ecological sustainability.20
Verderber et. al. also introduce the concept of “salutogenic” design. Salutogenesis, defined by medical sociologist Anton Antonovsky, links physical and cognitive human health and well-being to supportive, meaningful environments.21 In this context, the idea of salutogenesis cleverly legitimizes the cyclical relationship between Indigenous peoples, land, and community with health. Verderber et al. assert that addressing and rethinking strategies of health in the circumpolar north proves valuable as a potential venue for decolonization and resistance through the application of both these principles.
The two case studies are positioned as holistic definitions of ecohumanist design and salutogenic architecture,22 in contrast to the current colonial healthcare model.
The design approach accepts that these places and their ensuing practices are meaningful, enduring, and fundamental to one’s well-being as an active participant in the community. The spiritual dimension and ceremony still function as the baseline. The designs of both the behavioural health rehabilitation centre and the elderly housing prototypes illustrate the grounding of long-standing First Nations’ healing norms in contemporary conditions, subtly negotiating colonial interventions and ambitions of resistance.
Local methods and vernacular building traditions play a core role in the broader ecohumanist concerns of the designs such as “placemaking, attainment of genuine cultural resonance, and the maintenance (or reestablishment) of harmonious ecological relationships.”23 The harsh climatic realities demand this level of contextual and environmental rigour for these facilities to endure as key supports in the communities.
Conclusion
Indigenous peoples’ sense of self is truly spatial. Their centre is not positioned within a linear worldview but is relational, cyclical, and constantly fluctuating with ebbs and flows. As a result, Indigenous health must be considered within that relational worldview, transcending the physical body and encompassing land, identity, and community.
The poor health status of Canada’s Indigenous peoples directly correlates with the historical and present trauma of the colonial project, which focused on elimination and exploitation, specifically through the control of the land. The current landscape of inadequate healthcare facilities in the far north is just an example of continued dominance and neglect.
However, we are seeing a movement of resistance among Indigenous scholars, designers, and communities embracing the challenge of decolonization and using the topic of health to reassert their political presence. The case studies presented as alternatives by Verderber et. al. showcased the possibilities of agency and dissent manifested in evidence-based environmental design research. Although the evidence-based research is limited with regards to the effectiveness of sweat lodges in contemporary settings, the few existing studies indicate the significant impact of this community-based practice on participants, both Native and non-Native alike.24
Ultimately, it is clear that Indigenous health cannot be healed within a system of aggressive assimilation. New research empowers Indigenous land-based healing through revitalizing knowledge systems, strengthening community connections, and “repossessing” their environments. These acts of environmental repossession live within the greater objective of supporting Indigenous rights, community self-determination, and improved health.
————————–
1 Michael Garrett et. al., “Crying for a Vision: The Native American Sweat Lodge Ceremony as Therapeutic Intervention.” Journal of Counselling & Development 89, no. 3 (2011), 318. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6678.2011.tb00096.x.
2 Naomi Adelson, “Being Alive Well”: Health and the Politics of Cree Well-Being. Anthropological Horizons 16. (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 1.
3 Terry L. Cross, “Relational Worldview Model.” Pathways Practice Digest 12, no. 4 (June 1997). http://www.nicwa.org/Relational_Worldview/. 1.
4 Garrett et. al., “Crying for a Vision,” 318.
5 Naomi Adelson, “Health Beliefs and the Politics of Cree Well-Being.” Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 2, no. 1 (January 1998), 10 https://doi.org/10.1177/136345939800200101.
6 Vanessa Ambtman-Smith and Chantelle Richmond, “Reimagining Indigenous Spaces of Healing: Institutional Environmental Repossession.” Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health 1, no. 1 (October 12, 2020), 28. https://doi.org/10.33137/tijih.v1i1.34239.
7 Garrett et. al., “Crying for a Vision,” 319.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ambtman-Smith and Richmond, “Reimagining Indigenous Spaces of Healing: Institutional Environmental Repossession.” 29.
11 Adelson, “Health Beliefs and the Politics of Cree Well-Being,” 6.
12 Ibid.
13 Adelson, “Being Alive Well,” 113.
14 Ambtman-Smith and Richmond, “Reimagining Indigenous Spaces of Healing: Institutional Environmental Repossession.” 28.
15 Stephen Verderber, et. al., “Indigenous Ecohumanist Architecture for Health in Canada’s Far North.” HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal 13, no. 4 (October 2020). https://doi.org/10.1177/1937586720933176. 2.
16 Roy J. Romanow, Buildings on Values: The Future of Health Care in Canada: Final Report. Saskatoon: Commission on the Future of Health Care in Canada, (2002), 12.
17 Verderber et. al., “Indigenous Ecohumanist Architecture for Health in Canada’s Far North.” 12.
18 Adelson, “Health Beliefs and the Politics of Cree Well-Being,” 17.
19 Ambtman-Smith and Richmond, “Reimagining Indigenous Spaces of Healing: Institutional Environmental Repossession.” 29. 20 Verderber et. al., “Indigenous Ecohumanist Architecture for Health in Canada’s Far North.” 3.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Verderber et. al., “Indigenous Ecohumanist Architecture for Health in Canada’s Far North.” 13.
24 Garrett et. al., “Crying for a Vision,” 322.
