Finding a Place for Traditional Aboriginal Medicine in the Canadian Health Care
Abstract The Aboriginal population of Canada has much poorer health in comparison to the rest of Canadians. The cultural climate of Canada is largely defined by dominant white middle-class ideals rooted in a history established by European peoples that colonized the nation. The values and beliefs of marginalized cultural populations such as First Nations, or Aboriginals, have largely been ignored as Europeanized perspectives determine cultural norms. This paper attempts to address the questions how can traditional Aboriginal medicine be integrated into the Canadian health care system and what is the nurse’s role in this process as they are the most populous branch of primary public healthcare providers? There is a current desire to return to traditional healing methods to both revitalize the culture and shift western ideologies of the biomedical model of medicine. It is apparent that there are many differences existing between the health paradigms of traditional medicine and wes