In Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, schools of nursing and medicine across the country have been charged with responsibility to ensure health care practitioners are well equipped, both intellectually and emotionally, to provide health care to Indigenous people with cultural humility. It is suggested that Truth must proceed reconciliation. Indeed, settler knowledge of the historical experiences of Indigenous peoples is central to understanding their current relationships in the health care system. This workshop will include a number of ways to deepen our understanding of the historical and contemporary experiences of Indigenous people in relation to institutions such as Canada’s Residential Schools and “Indian Hospitals”. Together, participants will explore these realities and explore how we move forward in relationship with humility.
Workshops participants will have the opportunity to:
Deepen their understanding of the historical and contemporary experiences of Indigenous people in relation to institutions such as Canada’s Residential Schools and “Indian Hospitals”.
Explore their personal relationship to Calls to Action of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the principle of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Expand understandings of racism, cultural humility and to engage in the process of asking difficult questions.
Process
The workshop is grounded with a ceremony in which participants come together with open hearts and good intention.
The workshop begins with a panel of Indigenous nurses who speak from their own experience of nursing education and nursing in community.
A didactic portion of the workshop will provide knowledge of the historical relationships of Indigenous people with Canada’s education and health care system, including analysis of the ongoing effects of multi-generational trauma. This historical knowledge will be juxtaposed with historical and contemporary nursing theories of care that inform practice nursing engagement with Indigenous peoples. Additionally, presenters will review the underpinning documents of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Participants will engage in guided self-reflection in exploring their individual responses and relationship to the lived realities of Indigenous people.
Participants will gather in facilitated small groups to discuss topics such as cultural humility, living the TRC, and the dichotomy of racism in a caring curriculum. Efforts will be made to establish an emotionally safe environment for discussion, where difficult questions can be raised.
The final part of the day will be a coming together from group discussion and a ceremonial closing.