Aborginals

Aboriginals
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Aboriginals
Biomedical professionals often experience difficulties in health care service delivery to the Aboriginals and other indigenous people in Canada for instance the Metis, Inuit and the North American Indians. This is primarily due to the disparity that exists between Western health belief systems and Aboriginal medical practices. This paper discusses the main trends, implications, arguments, theories as well as approaches I mentioned in my annotated research. The goal is to synthesize the information in my resources into the most salient issues as well as debates related to the topic. In this paper, I will include some of my informed thoughts and analysis of the issues and debates, which I discovered through my research.
Western biomedical health professionals in most instances experience challenges with regard to providing care to the Native indigenous communities in Canada because of the cultural distance between Aboriginal culture and the mainstream western medicine, chiefly in regard to health system beliefs (Dolson, 2011). Since the arrival of the European settlers in North America, the lifestyles of the Canadian Aborigines have undergone momentous change. However, despite the immense changes and stress that the colonizing settlers forced upon the Aboriginals, they have been successful in maintaining much of their health and healing practices notwithstanding periods of cultural suppression (Obomsawin, 2007). They have passively resisted many western practices and beliefs with regard to health care. According to Obomsawin, the traditional Aboriginal health systems consist of properly thought-out frameworks for classifying animals, plants, climatic conditions and landscapes relative to their effects on disease and health. These taxonomies represent culturally pertinent empirical frameworks for assessing the uses of plants for both medicine and food (2007). To the Aboriginals, diet is highly considered as the key basis for supporting and/or health and well-being.
Robbins and Dewar (2011) stated that the traditional beliefs of the indigenous Canadian communities have adapted to the changing circumstances and conditions in which they live, and their perspectives of treatment have changed over this time. Nevertheless, there has been less change in their beliefs with regard to the cause of diseases and healing, and their health beliefs continue to play a role in giving meaning to events thereby helping people cope with serious illnesses and even death.
The Aboriginal medicine is a complex system that is closely linked to the beliefs and culture of the people, with knowledge of their land and its fauna and flora. Traditional indigenous communities and the mainstream biomedicine differ in different aspects with regard to health and healing systems. For instance, the Aboriginal approach to healthcare is holistic and recognizes the physical, spiritual as well as the social dimensions of health and life. They distinguish medicine from healing, which goes further than treatment of illness (Hill, 2003). In contrast, Hill points out that western medicine overlooks the relationship of the spiritual and social being to the body and the relationship the latter has on the former (2003). Additionally, Aboriginal interpretations of sickness related the causes of the illness to social, environmental and natural context of the patient rather than to infections by viruses or bacteria that is common with western medicine (Obomsawin, 2007). With regard to the understanding of mental health and illness, the Aboriginal wellness model involves mental, emotional, spiritual and the physical aspects of an individual in connection to land, community and the extended family. In contrast to this viewpoint in understanding mental illness, western medicine focuses on the idea that the key to curing mental disorder is to establish the underlying functions of the brain (Vudik et al., 2011).
Robbins and Dewar (2011) observed that although most of the traditional healers would sometimes link certain types of illness to supernatural causes – the influence of invisible intelligent spirits, most of the diseases were attributed to uncomplicated and simple natural causes and medicinal herbs came in handy. In contemporary Canada, biomedicine is increasingly verifying and acknowledging the great importance of simple environmental and lifestyle factors such as exercise, sound nutrition, positive mental attitudes, clean water and air as well as the abstention from toxic drugs as the key determinants of health. Moreover, western medicine is also increasingly recognizing the realities of metaphysical phenomena such as unseen intelligences that have interacted with humanity since time immemorial (Obomsawin, 2007).
It is imperative that biomedical health professionals understand the present behaviors and attitudes of the Aboriginals with regard to health care. In Canada, the vast majority of the Aboriginals live in remote and rural regions rather than metropolitan locations and their model of illness causation, supernatural intervention as well as treatment methods need to be understood by biomedical health professionals, respected and protected. Dolson (2011) reported that the traditional health beliefs of the Aboriginals are interconnected with several aspects of their lives for instance land, religion, obligations and kinship. Their sociomedical health and healing system places emphasis on spiritual and social dysfunction causing illness, and regards supernatural intervention as the chief cause of serious illness, for instance breach of a taboo. This provides a basis for the understanding of particular Aboriginal health beliefs, as well as the differences between biomedical technology and indigenous health practices. Understanding of the traditional indigenous viewpoints of illness causation may assist in clinical interactions by biomedical professionals.
According to Dolson (2011), many Aboriginal and indigenous understandings of health and healing are spiritual in origin and/or maintain a spiritual or symbolic element, thereby making it difficult to determine their effectiveness against empirically scientific values and standards. Such opinions tend to discredit the efficacy of traditional medicine and healing practices, yet since time immemorial they have been successfully used by the Aboriginals in treating various sicknesses.
Hill (2003) stated that the Aboriginal communities consider different ways of preventing illness in their traditional health beliefs. To them, good health is linked with strict observance to the approved patterns of behavior as well as avoidance of dangerous places, people and objects. Their preventative measures to promote wellbeing are based on laws that govern behavior and include obeying rituals and taboos, observing obligations and debts to others, respecting and honoring the dead, avoiding prohibited sacred sites among others. Their traditional medical treatment includes external remedies, bush medicine, traditional healer, and chanting/singing. Aboriginals’ bush medicine comprises a multitude of substances. It consists of restricted diet, herbal preparations, rest, diet, massage as well as external remedies such as smoke, ochre, steam and heat. However, the widespread availability of biomedicine has led to a decrease in usage of bush medicine even though the Aboriginals still have a lot of faith in its efficacy.
Their traditional healers have outstanding knowledge and powers that they use to aid people. Using their knowledge and power, they remove the influence of evil spirits and sorcery and help to restore the wellbeing of the patient’s soul. The roles of the Aboriginal traditional healers include providing strong social and spiritual support, determining the cause of a serious injury or disease, determ...