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OCR
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.
