Poor Health Among Indigenous Peoples a Question of Cultural Loss as well as Poverty
Canadian and Australian researchers discuss underlying causes of health disparities
Edmonton, Alberta (July 3, 2009) – The health problems of Indigenous peoples around the world are intimately tied to a number of unique factors, such as colonization, globalization, migration, and loss of land, language and culture. These factors remain even after the “typical” social problems facing the poor, such as inadequate housing, unemployment, and low education levels are addressed, according to Dr. Malcolm King, lead author of a paper to be published tomorrow in the Lancet, a prestigious UK medical journal.
[ ..... ]
“That’s why factors like retention of Aboriginal languages, cultural practices, self determination, and respect for Elders is so important,” King continues. “And that’s why we have so much to do to repair the damage done by so many disruptive assimilationist practices in the past, such as cutting off children from their families at residential schools, or suppression of cultural practices that conflicted with European ideas.”
[ source ] – (emphasis mine)
There is much to be done, too bad that neither the government nor society doesn’t seem interested in doing it ‘eh?
The government is very actively interested in NOT promoting traditional ways of being – and not just for Aboriginal people. I believe the way forward is more direct outreach by Aboriginal communities in educating mainstream society, not just on Aboriginal issues, but on traditional ways of being.
A very interesting comparative note from the Shmohawk here.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – where the hell is Leona on this?
I’m sorry, but the Lancet piece strikes me more as political homeopathy than medical science. If loss of language and culture can be correlated so closely to individual health that we can imply a causal connection, our immigrant population should be quite sick. I sense some effort to connect health with passivity and despair, which is fair enough because we instinctively feel there is some amorphous truth to that, but where exactly is this going to lead in terms of concrete problem-solving? If this is the root cause of poor health in aboriginal communities, why would anyone support more health funding?
One thing aboriginal peoples could do without is more cost-free, soothing, politically-correct jargon from non-aboriginals that the majority of them don’t believe but daren’t admit.
You can’t be serious in attempting to correlate the health cost to Aboriginal people in losing their languages and cultures (due to brutal and inhumane government policies) to the Canadian immigrant experience in which immigrants are more than welcome to maintain their linguistic and cultural ties to their old countries.
That is a whole other argument about which we would never agree. My concern is that there are specific needs in the communities, some of which have been highlighted on this blog recently. It seems to me the communities would benefit more from forcing the focus directly on them. Sweeping historical explanations like this just end up diverting everyone to hug-and-then-shrug mode, and they send a subliminal nothing-can-be-done message to the average Canadian. Group emotional wanks are quite cheap, you know. It’s a little like blaming all of Africa’s problems on colonialism. That’s great for chest-beating in undergraduate seminars, but who is teaching that Africans are being horribly ripped off today by agricultural tariffs in the West.?
And that’s not a whole other argument… how?
But since you’ve gone there, Africa’s problems CAN be blamed on colonialism. Who are you to decide all of a sudden that everybody needs to pull up their socks and stop demanding money. Money solves a lot of problems, in my opinion.
And I guess you could call the Residential School legacy a sweeping historical explanation as to why so many Aboriginal people live in poverty and suffer from otherwise forgotten health issues like tuberculosis. If you ask me, though, you’re the emotional wank in this argument – pretending that the average Canadian can do anything about the pressing human rights issue in Canada’s North when our government seems incapable of responding to what are well-documented third world conditions. (Although if you read my post, you’d note that I did say Aboriginal communities need to focus on outreach in educating Canadians about Aboriginal issues. So, guilty, too, I guess)
By the way, you don’t need to look to Africa for our government ripping people off. Check out the history of Aboriginal land claims.
@Peter: Oh come on Peter, I know you’re not daft, you’ve proven on many occasions, so what’s with the comparing voluntary immigrants to indigenous people of Canada?
Immigrants chose to leave their homes to be here, indigenous people had their homes here stolen by others who showed up on the shore with greater technology, their culture was forcefully demonized, their children taken from them and beaten and sexually abused by the church, and dependence was forced upon them by the government – do you not see even a slight difference there?
When I hear non-aboriginal people making comments like “If this is the root cause of poor health in aboriginal communities, why would anyone support more health funding” I want to beat my head on the desk and then go help organize the armed insurrection – let me be blunt…. I am willing to bet that you have absolutely -0- clue about what homeland, language, and culture mean to Aboriginal people. None.
That (unfortunately) puts you in the majority, 99% of those of European ancestry don’t, but, with a little work, you can rise above that.
Have you ever known anyone who had their entire life forcefully ripped away from them? How did they do physically after that? What was the state of their mental health?
How many people do you know who were once totally independent and had dependence forced upon them by the government? How do you think that would that affect physical or mental health?
How many people do you know that were sexually abused time and time again and then told to either shut up about it or told they were liars? How do you think that would that affect continuing physical or mental health?
As I said earlier, your not daft – so next time (please) do us the courtesy of thinking before you click [Post] lest we lump you into a whole ‘nuther category of folks who comment here.
PS: That offer of coffee is always open if you would prefer to educate yourself further about this, and the multi generational ramifications of our governments stupidity and arrogance….. not from reports and studies, but from real life experience.
I can’t promise anything but bet I could even drag balbulican along.
Stage, with all due respect, mau-mauing the flak catchers is fun, but not helpful.
Peter’s point is that a simple one to correspondence between loss of language and culture is invalidated by the immigrant experience. He’s saying – and your response actually seems to agree , and so do I – that the problem is vastly more complex than that.
The Lancet article, as befits a medical journal, addresses symptoms and hints at certain root causes; it’s not a political or anthropological treatise.
SL:
While I obviously don’t have anything like the personal connection you do, I may not be as ignorant as you imagine. I spent the better part of a decade in aboriginal politics, half of it getting my paycheque directly from them. I am well aware of the burden of their histories and the importance of their culture to them–I used to write that stuff. But how that all relates to their present plight is for them to decide and work with, not me. Their future hopefully will not be decided by an intellectual battle among white people. If you are going to look to non-aboriginal academics and scientists like the dude in the Lancet to tell us all the tale because you like the sound of the music, don’t cry foul when Widdowson shows up.
I am far more interested in how the non-aboriginal majority perceives all the issues and why assimilation keeps coming back in intellectual favour despite being rejected unanimously by aboriginal peoples time and time again. If you want to believe it’s all because of nasty neo-cons and BT’s, fine, but I don’t, although they do fan the flames. You are naive not to accept that the time the average Canadian will devote to informing themselves about aboriginal affairs and the sophistication of their opinions will not be severely limited. Likewise the priority they will give this to their lives. Quite apart from the fact that it is remote for many, there are many, many other injustices in the world that touch them. No, SL, people aren’t going to take a pass on Canada Day celebrations to mediate on tuberculosis in the north, and there is no reason they should. You know, my wife’s family suffered great prejudice and expulsion from Roumania at the end of the war. A terrible, harrowing story involving much fear and loss. Are you prepared to give up that bike ride this weekend to learn about it and get indignant with me? No? Heartless bastard! Anyway, can we not at least agree that these issues cannot be approached on the basis that every Canadian is pursuing full time post-graduate studies in aboriginal affairs?
Dammit, I’m the one trying to argue how to get the money flowing for healthcare, and I think I am taking all the assimilationist crap around us very seriously. My argument is simply that it does no good to present the story as one of hopeless despair locked in history with the only solutions so grandiose that they are outside the realm of the politically feasible no matter who is in power. You may like the Lancet article, but doesn’t it ever trouble you that health and social problems in aboriginal communities are always presented by academics and aboriginal leaders as collective, and don’t you see the sub-text of futility that conveys? Have you forgotten how difficult that notion is for non-aboriginals to digest cerebrally? We can all understand a practical need for more health services, but who can make any sense of the statement that alcoholism is ravaging Pembroke or obesity Kingston? Or that Franco-Ontarians have poor health because their language was proscribed eighty years ago?
By loudly linking current social issues to historical wrongs, this guy is just re-inforcing the last thing aboriginal peoples need–a general public preception that nothing works. Joe-citizen is not going to hire a lawyer to advise him on land claims obligations and treaty violations. All he knows is that they got screwed in the past, but he also knows that self-government and fiscal transfers that sound very large to him have been the name of the game for forty years now. Compassion and good-will may flow from every pore in his body, but he is going to want to see that some good and improvement comes from it, and if he can’t see that he is going to be at sea and wonder if the assimilationists aren’t right. If government isn’t living up to the promises and deals, tell him and I think you’ll gain an ally in most cases, but don’t tell him kids in Pond Inlet have bronchial problems because their grandfathers were mistreated in residental schools.
We’re not in the sixties anymore. Sooey may think Africa’s problems all stem from colonialism, but young African intellectuals are sick and tired of hearing that, especially from the despotic tyrants governing them. And what possible meaning could pinning everything on the events of a hundred years ago have for the majority of Canadians whose ancestors weren’t even here then? The problem isn’t whether the historical accounts are true or not–although there will always be some debate about that–the problem is that you won’t get the majority to accept an unlimited debt for it and just keep issuing what it sees as blank cheques.
You know, SL, Jewish history has been a formative influence on me and I am both a philo-Semite and pro-Israeli, but I’d be the first to tell them the last thing they need is another Holocaust museum.
Finally, I’d love to be educated by you in person, but coffee? Can’t you do better than that?
Despotic tyrants and colonialism are directly linked. And while we all recognize African leaders as the current problem, to deny the continuing effects of colonialism on Africa is just so typically Conservative I’m not surprised you’re attempting to do it.
And why should Aboriginal people have to get anybody onside in order for the Canadian government to do the right thing and respect land claim agreements, the Crown’s duty to consult Aboriginal people on issues affecting them, and respond to overcrowded housing conditions, inadequate healthcare facilities, and thirdworld living standards in the North? Further, what’s with your belief that Aboriginal communities aren’t helping themselves by standing up to the government for recognition of their rights?
OK, I take back what I said re: “I am willing to bet that you have absolutely -0- clue about what homeland, language, and culture mean to Aboriginal people. None.” and offer an apology for lumping you in with the masses.
Catch 22 then…. Aboriginal people have been saying this for years and either not believed or their reports were (and continue to be) minimized. If you were listening to Lowell Green this morning you would have heard his commentary on Aboriginal issues, it went something like the government and the church already apologized for a few things they might have done over a hundred years ago.
Yes, Lowell Green is a bigoted, uninformed, idiot – but he’s a bigoted, uninformed, idiot with a large audience and there are many people like him.
Ask, if my experience is any indicator you will be told that they way Aboriginal people were treated by the government and the church devastated them and that they still have not yet fully recovered…. given the relatively short time that has passed since (for example) people were relocated from their homes on the land into communities, and had their children removed from them, that’s really not all that surprising.
I’m not sure that we can say that sssimiliation keeps coming back in “intellectual favour“, i think we can say that it comes up in the further and upper right Conservative political circles and mindsets because that quadrant is generally against any form of multiculturalism — everybody should be the same, like them.
we can say that it comes up
No, I am simply frustrated that people are more worried about who said what on Canada Day and Michael Jacksons funeral than they are about issues that affect us as a nation. In an intelligent and aware society the UNICEF Canadian Supplement to The State of the Worlds Children released last month would have created a demand for the issues noted in it to be addressed – instead the reaction can generally be described as national denial and/or apathy.
Saturday afternoon works for me…. but what are we to do about what happened in Romania? I would imagine that the government there would care about as much about what I think as the government here cares but why not.
They don’t need to
We cannot say if the solutions are necessarily grandiose or not, at least not until there is an admission of the problem and it’s causes and concrete action to start there and move forward. We don’t have that yet.
I don’t like it that it is necessary that this be the case, but since neither government, nor society at large appears to want to give Aboriginal narrative and credience or authority what would you suggest?
It should re-enforce the idea that what has been done in the past failed and that there is work to be done.
Joe-citizen is not going to hire a lawyer to advise him on land claims obligations and treaty violations. All he knows is that they got screwed in the past, but he also knows that self-government and fiscal transfers that sound very large to him have been the name of the game for forty years now. Compassion and good-will may flow from every pore in his body, but he is going to want to see that some good and improvement comes from it, and if he can’t see that he is going to be at sea and wonder if the assimilationists aren’t right. If government isn’t living up to the promises and deals, tell him and I think you’ll gain an ally in most cases, but don’t tell him kids in Pond Inlet have bronchial problems because their grandfathers were mistreated in residental schools.
A hundred years ago? Neither my father-in-law (who was of the generation who were relocated) nor my ex-wife (who was of the generation who remembers the relocations from childhood) are that old Peter.
The “hundred years ago” thing is a myth that is a significant part of the problem, it was within my (and probably your) lifetime.
Or a beer…. I’m easy that way.