Oldal 260 [260]
ERIC SMITH
RESPECT FOR PERSONS
There is also concern that the appropriation of the cultural safety paradigm
leads to a dehumanization of Indigenous persons. Ihere are two ways in
which this concern may play out, both of which come down to an erasure of
personhood. 1he first has to do with a loss of humanity through becoming
complicit to colonial ideals. Indeed, many Indigenous people have been
"trained" to believe they are lesser than, or destined to be the victims of an
inalienable oppression." If we continue to simply gather knowledge about
Indigenous cultures as something outside of the culture of medicine, we
only serve to continue this training. Ihis sort of oppression can be seen in
something I refer to as deficit lensing, wherein already oppressed cultures
are viewed only by the deficiencies they have or the hardships they face,
rather than their personhood. Collecting Indigenous knowledge is likely
to reveal nothing more than the fact that Indigenous people are worse off
than non-Indigenous people. This explicitly plays into deficit lensing and
enforces ideas of Indigenous persons being less than non-Indigenous persons.
Consequently, there is a sort of manifest destiny that occurs in which some
Indigenous persons are lead to believe that they are subhuman and deserve
the inequitable treatment they receive. But this is in no way a necessary state
of affairs. Just because someone has lost their personhood does not mean we
are not morally responsible for this loss or should not make efforts to restore
the person.
The second concern is that of the lab rat phenomenon. Do Indigenous
individuals accessing healthcare know that they are being used as a litmus
test of their culture? Some may infer it, but I doubt it is ever explicitly stated.
Should Indigenous patients know they are being assessed using diagnostic
tools designed specifically for them? Absolutely. If Indigenous people are not
already being deficit lensed, they are being treated solely as research subjects.
Cultural safety’s appropriated form makes this perfectly permissible.
JUSTICE
The main concerns of justice in the application of the cultural safety paradigm
have to do with misrepresenting Indigenous people. If we are using the cultural
safety paradigm as a means of gathering knowledge and corroborating this
knowledge into “understanding”, then we are left with finding a framework
for informing this corroboration. More likely than not, this framework will
5 Shandra Spears, Strong Spirit, Fractured Identity: An Ojibway Adoptee’s Journey to
Wholeness, in Martin J. Cannon - Lina Sunseri (eds.), Racism, Colonialism, and Indigeneity
in Canada, 2” edition, 2018, 105-110.