Global Indigenous Health

Book excerpt: Indigenous peoples globally have a keen understanding of their health and wellness through traditional knowledge systems. In the past, traditional understandings of health often intersected with individual, community, and environmental relationships of well-being, creating an equilibrium of living well. However, colonization and the imposition of colonial policies regarding health, justice, and the environment have dramatically impacted Indigenous peoples’ health. Building on Indigenous knowledge systems of health and critical decolonial theories, the volume’s contributors—who are academic and community researchers from Canada, the United States, Sweden, and New Zealand—weave a narrative to explore issues of Indigenous health within four broad themes: ethics and history, environmental and ecological health, impacts of colonial violence on kinship, and Indigenous knowledge and health activism. Chapters also explore how Indigenous peoples are responding to both the health crises in their communities and the ways for non-Indigenous people to engage in building positive health outcomes with Indigenous communities. Global Indigenous Health is unique and timely as it deals with the historical and ongoing traumas associated with colonization and colonialism, understanding Indigenous concepts of health and healing, and ways of moving forward for health equity. Contributors: Sharon Leslie Acoose Seth Adema Peter Butt John E. Charlton Colleen Anne Dell Debra Dell Paul DePasquale Judy A. Dow C. Randy Duncan Carina Fiedeldey-Van Dijk Barbara Fornssler Chelsea Gabel Eleanor Louise Hadden Laura Hall Robert Henry Carol Hopkins Robert Alexander Innes Simon Lambert Amanda LaVallee Josh Levy Rachel Loewen Walker David B. MacDonald Peter Menzies Christopher Mushquash David Mykota Nancy Poole Alicia Powell Ioana Radu Margo Rowan Mark F. Ruml Caroline L. Tait Lisa Tatonetti Margaretha Uttjek Nancy Van Styvendale