Medicine Wheel
This graphic depicts the medicine wheel which is an important part of Indigenous health and culture. The four quadrants represent many things including the four stages of life, the four medicines, and the four states of well-being. Find out more here.
Welcome to the library guide for indigenous health! This guide highlights books, journals, databases, videos, and local resources focused on various aspects of indigenous health.
Health Sciences Librarians are available to answer questions and to meet with individuals or groups for consultations by phone, online, or in person.
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Queen's University is situated on traditional Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Territory.
Applying Indigenous Research Methods focuses on the question of "How" Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRMs) can be used and taught across Indigenous studies and education. In this collection, Indigenous scholars address the importance of IRMs in their own scholarship, while focusing conversations on the application with others. Each chapter is co-authored to model methods rooted in the sharing of stories to strengthen relationships, such as yarning, storywork, and others. The chapters offer a wealth of specific examples, as told by researchers about their research methods in conversation with other scholars, teachers, and community members. Applying Indigenous Research Methods is an interdisciplinary showcase of the ways IRMs can enhance scholarship in fields including education, Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, social work, qualitative methodologies, and beyond.
From Oceania to North America, indigenous peoples have created storytelling traditions of incredible depth and diversity. The term 'indigenous storywork' has come to encompass the sheer breadth of ways in which indigenous storytelling serves as a historical record, as a form of teaching and learning, and as an expression of indigenous culture and identity. But such traditions have too often been relegated to the realm of myth and legend, recorded as fragmented distortions, or erased altogether. Decolonizing Research brings together indigenous researchers and activists from Canada, Australia and New Zealand to assert the unique value of indigenous storywork as a focus of research, and to develop methodologies that rectify the colonial attitudes inherent in much past and current scholarship. By bringing together their own indigenous perspectives, and by treating indigenous storywork on its own terms, the contributors illuminate valuable new avenues for research, and show how such reworked scholarship can contribute to the movement for indigenous rights and self-determination.
The health disparities affecting Indigenous peoples in Canada might well be understood as a national epidemic. Although progress has been made in the last decade towards both understanding and ameliorating Indigenous health inequalities, very little research or writing has expanded a social determinants of health framework to account for the unique histories and present realities of Indigenous peoples in this country. This timely edited collection addresses this significant knowledge gap, exploring the ways that multiple health determinants beyond the social?from colonialism to geography, from economy to biology?converge to impact the health status of Indigenous peoples in Canada. This unique collection, comprised largely of contributions by Indigenous authors, offers the voices and expertise of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis writers from across Canada. The multitude of health determinants of Indigenous peoples are considered in a selection of chapters that range from scholarly papers by research experts in the field, to reflective essays by Indigenous leaders. Appropriate throughout a range of disciplines, including Health Studies, Indigenous Studies, Public and Population Health, Community Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing, and Social Work, this engaging text broadens the social determinants of health framework to better understand health inequality. Most importantly, it does so by placing front and center the voices and experiences of Indigenous peoples.
First edition named a 2013 PROSE Award Winner in Nursing and Allied Health Sciences.This textbook for Canadian nursing and allied health students explores the major health issues of Indigenous populations and how to improve their overall health. The second edition addresses a key development since the first edition was published: an increasing consensus among Indigenous peoples that their health is tied to environmental determinants, both physical and philosophical. This text describes what is distinctive about Indigenous approaches to health and healing and why it should be studied as a discrete field. It provides a framework for professionals to approach Indigenous clients in a way that both respects the client's worldview while retaining a professional epistemology. Grounded in the concepts of cultural sensitivity, competency, and safety - yet filled with practical information - this book integrates historical, social, and clinical approaches illuminated by concrete examples from the field and relevant case studies. New to the Second Edition: Delivers thoroughly updated content, statistics, and coverage of political developments since 2013 Includes a complete test bank of multiple choice, true/false, and short answer questions in each chapter Provides sample PowerPoint presentation lectures in each chapter Key Features: Authored by a leading researcher and educator in First Nations and Inuit health Serves as the only up-to-date text on Indigenous health in Canada Enhances learning with chapter objectives, critical thinking exercises, abundant primary source material, and references
A shocking expose; of the dark history and legacy of segregated Indigenous health care in Canada. After the publication of his critically acclaimed 2011 book Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer's Search for Justice and Healing in Africa, author Gary Geddes turned the investigative lens on his own country, embarking on a long and difficult journey across Canada to interview Indigenous elders willing to share their experiences of segregated health care, including their treatment in the "Indian hospitals" that existed from coast to coast for over half a century. The memories recounted by these survivors--from gratuitous drug and surgical experiments to electroshock treatments intended to destroy the memory of sexual abuse--are truly harrowing, and will surely shatter any lingering illusions about the virtues or good intentions of our colonial past. Yet, this is more than just the painful history of a once-so-called vanishing people (a people who have resisted vanishing despite the best efforts of those in charge); it is a testament to survival, perseverance, and the power of memory to keep history alive and promote the idea of a more open and just future. Released to coincide with the Year of Reconciliation (2017), Medicine Unbundled is an important and timely contribution to our national narrative.
Separate Beds is the shocking story of Canada's system of segregated health care. Operated by the same bureaucracy that was expanding health care opportunities for most Canadians, the "Indian Hospitals" were underfunded, understaffed, overcrowded, and rife with coercion and medical experimentation. Established to keep the Aboriginal tuberculosis population isolated, they became a means of ensuring that other Canadians need not share access to modern hospitals with Aboriginal patients. Tracing the history of the system from its fragmentary origins to its gradual collapse, Maureen K. Lux describes the arbitrary and contradictory policies that governed the "Indian Hospitals," the experiences of patients and staff, and the vital grassroots activism that pressed the federal government to acknowledge its treaty obligations. A disturbing look at the dark side of the liberal welfare state, Separate Beds reveals a history of racism and negligence in health care for Canada's First Nations that should never be forgotten.
Structures of Indifference examines an Indigenous life and death in a Canadian city and what it reveals about the ongoing history of colonialism. In September 2008, Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-Status Anishinaabe resident of Winnipeg, arrived in the emergency room of a major downtown hospital. Over a thirty-four- hour period, he was left untreated and unattended to, and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection.McCallum and Perry present the ways in which Sinclair, once erased and ignored, came to represent diffuse, yet singular and largely dehumanized ideas about Indigenous people, modernity, and decline in cities. This story tells us about ordinary indigeneityin the city of Winnipeg through Sinclair's experience and restores the complex humanity denied him in his interactions with Canadian health and legal systems, both before and after his death.
