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ERIC SMITH There are considerable differences between the Maori, for which the cultural safety paradigm was designed, and Canadian and U.S. Indigenous populations. Since New Zealand is a much smaller country than Canada or the U.S., land claim agreements between the Maori and the New Zealand government are much more well-defined than they are with Indigenous Canadians or Americans.*° This makes delineations of political sovereignty much easier to establish. Moreover, the Maori people, while not completely homogenous, share a common language and culture that is protected by federal law (e.g., the Treaty of Waitangi), while Canadian and American Indigenous people are incredibly diverse in both language and culture that is legally protected to varying degrees.*”” ** Therefore, while understanding “the” Maori culture is not easier per se, it is at least possible. Understanding “the” Canadian or American Indigenous culture is a pointless endeavour; the actual political and cultural complexities of these Indigenous populations do not reflect such unanimity. It should also be noted that the differences in healthcare structure and provision in Canada and the U.S. are not insignificant. Canada and the U.S. differ in many ways, each of which will alter the ways in which an ideology-modifying paradigm implicates its stakeholders; the most obvious difference being the public versus private approaches to healthcare funding. However, there are more direct differences regarding each country’s address of Indigenous persons. For example, it has been argued that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is currently encouraging more collaboration with Indigenous groups than its American counterparts.* However, the primary concern of this paper is to recognize the limits of appropriating cultural safety, regardless of circumstance. In healthcare systems as antagonistic to pluralistic healthcare (which involves more than strict adherence to biomedicine) as Canada and the U.S.,* these limits are sure to lead to undesirable outcomes irrespective of some structural differences. Cultural safety may also be limited by its design as a pedagogical tool for nurses.*! Extending the paradigm to healthcare more generally (which Canada and the U.S. have done) assumes some form of transferability that may not actually exist. It seems intuitive that nursing education and general healthcare, regardless of cultural context, are distinct in a number of relevant ways. Educational aids (which could include ideology-modifying paradigms) Maggie Cywink, Why the Indigenous in New Zealand Have Fared Better than Those in Canada, The Conversation, 15 October 2017, 1. Cywink, Why the Indigenous, 1. Daschuk, Clearing the Plains. 39 Tallbear, Native American DNA, 186-189. Maureen K. Lux, Seperate Beds, 5. Rose McEldowney - Margaret J. Connor, Cultural Safety as an Ethic of Care: A Praxiological Process, Journal of Transcultural Nursing, Vol. 22, No. 4 (2011), 342-349.
