Respect For Tradition

2/7/2014

F​irst Nations Health Council Diaries​
Nick Chowdhury

Kowaintco.PNG
There have been a number of positive developments in the North Island including progress with the Mt. Waddington Local Working Group with Island Health, a community movement on Traditional Knowledge and Medicines, and working closely with Island Health on the North Island Hospitals Project (NIHP).The North Island First Nations have had an opportunity to feed into design concepts and provide consistent feedback on the stages of building these two hospitals with the NIHP Aboriginal Planning Group and a series of community information sessions, rather than just asking what we think about the design and that’s it. Island Health is developing appreciation for the elements important to the child and the Elder - real First Nations elements, not just painted or whitewashed on the top of a building.

This is a great opportunity for the FNHC, FNHA, and Island Health to partner to really incorporate new approaches that look at how we integrate traditional medicines and foods, to better accommodate First Nations people visiting the hospitals and giving new opportunities for innovation we’ve never had before. We’re talking about garden space available to plant herbs and plants that provide medicines, and during the sessions when I raised the question to Tom Sparrow, Chief Project Officer of the NIHP of how are they were going to do that - the question came back to us for our lead of how are we going to do that? So we’ve continued the discussion and its grown into a recognition for communities in the North end of the Island that have started a learning process of collecting info on gardens, plants and herbs that provide medicines, and building that connection between the knowledge holders and the youth. It’s exciting work to see this happening at the community level. We are also looking at establishing a committee that would oversee the sharing of information through our regional office so that the traditional data is protected and it’s ours but also allowing us to share that with the hospitals project so Island Health can incorporate garden space that we can use and establishing a committee that we can oversee how the garden space is managed and maintained. So the long term is looking at how those plants are harvested or stored so we have a stock readily available for people who want or need it. So this starts to turn the scope of the committee or working group into a longer term process. We want this to grow beyond our involvement and live beyond our involvement. It will be amazing to see a committee in place to work with hospitals to maintain and manage the gardens and also work with the communities on the Island and hopefully we can spread this from the communities on the North Island throughout all of Vancouver Island and potentially build community learning centres or community healing centres where people are forming stronger relationships with this information.

We’re also working on information exchanges with younger people who are learning about healing and traditional medicines – and ensuring that knowledge now is not at risk of being lost. Our Elders have done a lot of work building those relationships and sharing that learning. This conversation is including key aspects of respect for the Elders, and respect for the knowledge itself. There’s caution and concern about sharing this information in an environment where it could be exploited. The knowledge holder doesn’t need to be an Elder, there are people in their 20’s that may have been learning about this for the last 10-15 years of their life. We feel that traditional knowledge and medicines are directly tied to our wellbeing. We’re right at the beginning stages of seeing how we can start integrating this – it’s exciting work and I can’t wait to see where our regional offices start developing to assist in that data management, I know it’s going to be a carefully planned process.

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