“And They Are Still the Guardians of These Sacred Waters …”: Land as a Process of Reconciliation.

Abstract

Given that Indigenous Peoples in Canada continue to face health disparities as a result of ongoing colonial attempts at genocide, reconciliation requires using a decolonized health framework that identifies oppression and marginalization while seeking to improve Indigenous Peoples’ health and facilitates a shared understanding of well-being. Community and land-based interventions hold promise in providing insight into how the reconciliatory process can occur and have been shown to successfully address the health disparities experienced by Indigenous Peoples by connecting participants to their kin, culture, and identity. However, the impact of these interventions on facilitators, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, is lesser known. This qualitative study explores the reconciliatory effects of a decolonized framework on 10 Indigenous and ally community-engaged facilitators during a land-based healing lodge using semistructured pre- and postinterviews. Findings indicate that engaging with the land as an equitable research partner while being reflective allows facilitators to develop a decolonized relationship with the place an intervention is being held, themselves, and effectively engage with the partner community. Furthermore, by implementing a decolonized approach to culturally centered interventions, several facilitators’ perspectives of healing transitioned from understanding healing as an outcome to a holistic process that engages place and the broader ecology. These findings signal a need for those working toward reconciliation (e.g., researchers, evaluators, health and health-allied professionals) to consider the influence of Indigenous ways of knowing and being on both Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals involved in the healing process.