Interactions Of Indigenous (Holistic) Medicine With Colonialism
This Essay is about the Interactions of Indigenous Medicine with colonialism, Canadian government policies, and Residental schools. This essay is meant to be a historical analysis to show how western biomedicine and traditional medicine have interacted (or how they were in conflict/co-existed at the same time). To expand, also look at the laws/regulations (Indian Act) were put in place to limit/restrict Indigenous Medicine, and how Colonial governments of the past (in Canada) interacted with Indigenous medicine (did they make any attempts to replace traditional medicine with western biomedicine at any point? Please look into specific events for this). Some sources that may help can be Mary-Ellen Kelm's Colonizing Bodies and work by Maureen Lux.
Please be sure to use endnotes, and to include a bibliography (alphabetically sorted), with a title page!
Thesis: This paper will analyze the profound effects of colonialism, the Canadian government's policies, and residential schools on the practice of Indigenous medicine.
(Feel free to improve the thesis)
Indigenous Holistic Medicine
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History
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November 28, 2017
Indigenous Holistic Medicine
Indigenous holistic medicine is a crucial part of healthcare that is used in the entire world. In fact, residential schools, Canadian government policies, and colonialism interact with indigenous holistic medicine.
Ahlberg (2017) writes that since the 1970s, indigenous holistic medicine is being used already and it is considered to be a contributor to having a stronger health care system in less developed countries. The continuous development of traditional drug therapies composes several unpredictable outcomes if 2 elements are used in the approaches. Rivera (2017) says that there are a lot of benefits come from using herbs, areas of concern have possible product contamination, toxicity, unknown interactions to drugs, and conventional medicine with traditional medicine. In addition, traditional medicine is part of their cultural belief system. Furthermore, Europeans, Australians, and North Americans have embraced TM already. Benefits of TM practices entail accessibility, cultural acceptance, and countries that have less modern technology. Hence, traditional medicine’s interaction with colonialism is positive because a lot of countries have adapted the practice already. According to Obomsawin PhD (2007), it is because the healing approaches come from world-view that aims to include a manner of how the mental, spiritual, social, ecological, and physical health dimensions.
When a lot of Europeans started to settle in North America, society’s social and political structure started to undergo changes. The settlers started to gain control of the land because of the rich resources they have. The aboriginal people of Canada agreed to leave their traditional ideologies for the sake of health care. As soon as the European settlers started to dominate Canada, their health care systems had the right to decide which was to be used or not by society. Canada was not aware of the consequences this might bring to them and they almost lost traditional medicine practice.
This led to great consequences for the Aboriginals as it is obvious by the failed attempts to use modern medicine in improving their health status. The federal health care system failed to meet the needs of Canada’s Aboriginal population as shown in statistical results.
MacDonald and Steenbeek (2015) says that during the 17th century, Europeans that 1st arrived in Canada saw the aboriginal people as uncivilized, and children had to be moved to become more domesticated in European way. When 1879 came, residential schools were given an official policy of assimilation of Aboriginal peoples living in Canada. Due to this, the government built and implemented schools to work with different religious organizations. The children that were forced to leave their original homes were abused and up to this day, the 1st existence of residential schools in Canada still impacts the aboriginals. The effect of assimilation was negative towards their traditional healing practices. This event caused the aboriginals to be in denial of their origins and traditional medicine practices. This included promotion of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being that believe in ceremonies, rituals, and others. When they lost traditional healing practices in medicine, they were coerced to start using foreign medicine and become reliant on patriarchal health care systems.
At the beginning of 15th century, Aboriginals developed tuberculosis, diabetes, alcoholism, cancer, heart diseases, mental health issues, and sexual violence. Moreover, sexually transmitted infections became more common, and obesity. These were all not rampant before the colonizat...