Changing Wellness Perspectives
When it comes to empowering wellness systems, the modern based models aren’t suited to heal indigenous communities. They often are not informed by indigenous ways of knowing and being or are not designed to orient health and wellness for smaller communities. Rather, they apply a top-down approach to manage the health of the majority population, where a one type fits all health solution seems to be preferred in lieu of other methodologies.
Approaching health and wellness through an indigenous lens can help support communities that often feel left out, neglected, or abandoned by current health systems. By utilizing an integrated systems such as Strategic Intervention in conjunction with indigenous ways of learning, we can properly contextualize our problems while also being informed by ancestral practices and perspectives.
Empowerment Through Traditional Systems
When our health and wellness are guided through an indigenous lens, it’s important to consider several factors within yourself such as your spiritual health, mental, physical, and emotional states. These are pillars of the Self which can help form a well-rounded individual who takes the time to reflect on family, community as well as their own needs for growth and nurture.
The more we switch our perceptions and paradigms away from a colonial to post-colonial (or rather, pre-colonial) framework, the more we can do the proper work to align ourselves with the identity of character our ancestors and manage new developing issues in our lives with wisdom and understanding.
Empowerment in Practice
What does empowerment look like in practice while applying an indigenous paradigm? We can understand what this looks like by comparing two of the framework’s key pillars.
Contemporary populations are currently compelled to understand their approach to wellness through an “Inform and Consult” binary. You may look at these words and think to yourself, “What is the big deal with being informed and consulting others?”. Nothing, on the surface.
However, according to this study, “Approaches of ‘Inform’ and ‘Consult’ perpetuate tokenistic and insincere interactions, with those dominant retaining power and decision-making over the processes and directions enacted.”
We can understand this to mean that when we seek help with professions through the current dominant health and wellness systems, we are met with ineffective results. Thus, we fail to address the serious root of our problem and we carry on with our lives and the underlying trauma or problems in our lives continue to affect our lives and relationships.
In contrast, we can shift our approach and use health and wellness systems which instead ‘involve’ and ‘collaborate’ with one another. These indigenous based methodologies represent increasingly meaningful community engagement by “committing to the inclusion of those affected by the decision and initiative, whereby ‘Empower’ secures community ownership of the process and ensures power for setting direction and leading initiatives.”
Gaining Clarity
How can you apply this to your life directly? It may help to have some guidance at the beginning. That’s why we recommend services such as Indigenous Empowerment Coach, they offer a FREE clarity session to understand how you can move forward in your personal journey. Indigenous Empowerment Coach has had many positive impacts on individuals, families, organizations and communities through coaching systems and we think it’s a great place to start.
So sign up here for your FREE Clarity Session, or visit www.IECoach.ca to learn more.
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