June 2011 - The health and well-being of Aboriginal communities is closely linked to connection with the land. As the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples stated in 2007 (article 25):

Indigenous People have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual and material relationship with the lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources, which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used, and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard.

Margot Parkes is Canada Research Chair in Health, Ecosystems and Society at the University of Northern BC and author of a new NCCAH review that identifies potential common ground between the emerging fields of ecohealth and holistic approaches to Aboriginal health.

Parkes is at the forefront of a new generation of research and practice that is bridging the "artificial divides" between  environmental and social approaches to health and well-being. 

In the NCCAH review, she notes the current tendency to emphasize the environment as a source of illness and contaminants, focused on on such issues as hazards in food, water and soil. "This leads to a view of the natural world as a source of illness rather than a basis for life." She also notes that analyses of health inequities tend to overlook the role of the physical environment as a fundamental factor.

Ecohealth approaches have been described as "participatory, systems-based health approaches to understanding and promoting health and wellbeing in the context of social and ecological interactions." Building on the strengths of both Indigenous knowledge and ecohealth is "fertile ground that could help foster a future for Aboriginal communities where ecosystems, equity, health and culture can flourish," she suggests.

Margot Parkes launched a new project June 1: "Ecohealth and Watersheds in Northern BC." supported by the NCCAH and funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. 

Reconnecting People and Place

The review, Ecohealth and Aboriginal Health: a Review of Common Ground, includes examples of how ecohealth approaches are being applied to improve health and well-being in Aboriginal communities in Canada and Indigenous communities internationally.

In Canada's Arctic, for instance, connections are being made between the health of ice and the health of Inuit peoples in a project conducted through the Nasivvik Centre for Inuit Health and Changing Environments, based at Laval and Trent Universities. The project with the Ilisaqsivik Society in Clyde River includes mapping inuusiqartiarvit or "sites for health."  Activities like hunting, camping and fishing are important aspects of physical and mental health for the predominantly Inuit residents of Clyde River.  Through the community-based Clyde River Observers Pilot Program, the project set out to document local knowledge about how environment and health are connected in Clyde River, and how the relationship has changed over time.

A recent hunt near Clyde River. Photo courtesy of the Ilisaqsivik Society.

Such projects constitute a new generation of approaches to Aboriginal health. Parkes said the emerging field of ecohealth is complementing innovations proposed by holistic models of Aboriginal health, and can learn from longstanding precedents of Indigenous worldviews recognizing land and the environment as a source of life, culture, identity and well-being. This integrated understanding is particularly crucial in addressing complex health problems - "especially in communities facing rapid social and ecological change where concerns regarding health, environment and inequities are intensified."

Parkes notes the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health contribute to understanding health in relation to ecosystems and to social equity, with relevance to Aboriginal communities. The Millennium Assessment examined links between human well-being and natural assets in relation to forest, woodland, inland, urban, coastal island and marine ecosystems, among many others, shedding light on complex ecological relationships that provide the foundation for human life, societies and health, and which are in turn affected by human activities. From 2001 to 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment involved the work of more than 1,360 experts worldwide. Their findings provided a state-of-the-art scientific appraisal of the condition and trends in the world's ecosystems and the services they provide, as well as the scientific basis for action to conserve and use them sustainably. 

At the same time, the WHO Commission's landmark report affirmed unique Indigenous relations to land.

As Parkes notes, "for many working in Aboriginal health, these developments echo the knowledge of Elders and provide more impetus to existing efforts to improve health as part of an ongoing interaction between people and places, communities, culture and nature."

NCCAH Academic Lead Dr. Margo Greenwood refers to child health as embedded in a web-of-being with direct relevance to ecosystem and climate change. See poster image. See also: Aboriginal Children's Health: Leaving No Child Behind, the Canadian Supplement to UNICEF's State of the Word's Children 2009 report.

  

Mel Bazil on Ecohealth from NCCAH - Aboriginal Health on Vimeo.  Mr. Bazil, of the Dze L K'ant Friendship Centre Society in Smithers, B.C., speaks of culture and land in Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en territories. (3:24)