Staying true to traditions can improve health

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GUEST WRITER

Is our culture important to our health as Aboriginal people? What does being healthy mean to you?

For most people it means being able to do the things you love to do, caring and sharing time with those you love.

As a registered nurse, I am interested in my health, the health of my family, the health of my community and the health of my nation. My training as a nurse has introduced me to the idea of holism. For many Aboriginal people who are interested in traditional teachings, holism means the medicine wheel.

The medicine wheel shows us that there are four parts to health and they are all connected.

I remember crying when I was at a nursing conference eight years ago and I was given the teachings of the medicine wheel by a group of Elders. I cried because they shared these teachings in English.

I had only heard them in our language (Saulteaux/Ojibway) and I could not understand with my mind because I do not know my language. I did understand with my heart and this unleashed many emotions for me.

The most important message I received through these teachings was that our health as Aboriginal people is directly tied to our connection with our languages and our culture.

Our language, our ways of knowing, our culture, have been passed from generation to generation for thousands of years in our communities. Much of this knowledge has been lost through what we know as colonization.

Colonization forced our grandmothers and grandfathers not to speak their languages, charged them as criminals if they practised their healing ceremonies, and caused sickness, disease and death for many who were forced to live a life that was not natural.

For the most part, non-Aboriginal health care professionals provide health care services in our communities. These helpers work from what is known as a "biomedical" way of knowing, which focuses on curing diseases through surgeries or medicines. This way of knowing has not been successful in our communities because there is more to health than lack of disease. We must also look at the causes of disease and sickness in our communities. These causes are linked to the loss of our economies, our societies, our land, and our culture.

Our leaders are working at a national and international level to ensure that our Aboriginal and treaty rights to health are recognized and affirmed. We must work at an individual, family and the community level to have these rights recognized so that we can rebuild the health of our nation.

How can we do this? It begins with you and your family. How do you honor your culture? Do you have respect for traditional teachings and those people who hold these teachings? Do you seek them out for your emotional, mental and spiritual health or do you just go to the nurse or doctor for your physical sicknesses? Do you look at other areas of your life that might be causing your sickness or the sickness of loved ones?

We must be responsible for our own health and we must also ensure that those who are helping us (the health care workers) are also responsible for knowing that we do have our Aboriginal ways of knowing about health. As we re-learn and trust that knowledge, we are more willing to share that knowledge with others and we can work together-the people, our leaders and the health care providers-to ensure that culture is part of the delivery of health care services in our communities.

Culture is not taught in school or in books. Aboriginal culture is complex and always changing because as individuals, families and communities we see culture through our own eyes. No two eyes see the same thing. What we do have in common is our desire to walk this path of learning where our culture shapes our identity and self-esteem as Aboriginal peoples.

When European peoples first landed in this country they saw strong, proud people. We knew who we were and we had a place in the world. It is up to us individually, as families and communities to reclaimthat place in the world and stand strong, proud and healthy.

Laurie Dokis, RN, NP(EC), BScN, is a member of Dokis First Nation in Northern Ontario.