A brand new on-line route rooted in the idea that of two-eyed seeing is instructing health-care suppliers about cultural protection so they are able to higher serve Indigenous sufferers.
Two-eyed seeing, or etuaptmumk, is a worldview that brings in combination two views without delay — the lens of Indigenous wisdom and that of Western science.
The six modules will train other folks about Mi’kmaw language, tradition and geography, whilst analyzing how racism and colonialism have harmed Indigenous other folks searching for care. There can be classes on trauma-informed scientific practices.
“It’s a very powerful pathway that we are on at this time,” Sharon Rudderham instructed CBC Radio’s Mainstreet. “, for years and years and years, Indigenous other folks in reality had been invisible within the health-care surroundings.”
She’s the director of fitness transformation for Tajikeimɨk, a brand new Mi’kmaw fitness and wellness authority that formally introduced previous this yr. Tajikeimɨk has partnered with Dalhousie College and the IWK Well being Centre in Halifax to create the route.
“We’ve got heard the tales and skilled the unfavourable remedy … that Indigenous other folks face, or racism that they face when gaining access to mainstream health-care products and services,” Rudderham mentioned.
The brand new curriculum is named To Know Higher is to Do Higher:Translating Indigenous Wisdom to Well being Apply. At this time, it is open to 375 team of workers from the IWK, Nova Scotia Well being and Mi’kmaw group fitness settings, with the objective of rolling it out around the province.
For years and years and years, Indigenous other folks in reality had been invisible within the health-care surroundings.– Sharon Rudderham, Tajikeimɨk
For Rudderham, taking a two-eyed seeing method to fitness care is about working out therapeutic and wellness past a scientific surroundings.
“The lessons of Indigenous individuals are simply as necessary,” she mentioned.
“It is about discovering stability and the approaches to maintain therapeutic and wellness which might be all-encompassing and simply now not bodily, scientific approaches.”
Moving how fitness care is delivered
Margot Latimer, a professor and the Indigenous Well being Chair in Nursing at Dalhousie College, mentioned the route is intended to teach particular person clinicians, but additionally shift how fitness care is delivered on a bigger scale.
She pointed to the province’s language line that provides sufferers get entry to to an interpreter in certainly one of 170 languages.
“However the one language that’s not in it’s Mi’kmaw, the language of the First Other people right here … whilst you discuss inequities and cultural protection as a primary step, that are meant to be the primary language that is there,” mentioned Latimer, who could also be certainly one of co-leads at the venture.

The web route is self-directed and each and every module is set 45 mins to an hour in period. Some modules also are facilitated via an teacher so members can ask questions, mentioned Latimer.
“One of the vital content material, it is delicate and we need to ensure that other folks perceive and are supported as they be told the content material,” she mentioned.
The route is a very long time within the making. Rudderham and Latimer first set to work in combination greater than a decade in the past.
“All of us have to concentrate on breaking down the ones boundaries and development relationships,” Rudderham mentioned.
Mainstreet NS12:02New cultural protection coaching for health-care suppliers rooted in two-eyed seeing
A brand new on-line route rooted in the idea that of two-eyed seeing is instructing health-care suppliers about cultural protection so they are able to higher serve Indigenous sufferers. Mainstreet spoke with two individuals who’ve been operating in this for years.