Select Readings in Support of Indian and Inuit Health Consultation

Publisher:  National Indian Brotherhood, Ottawa, Canada
Year Published:  1980
Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX2084

Abstract: 
The two volumes of Readings in Support of Indian and Inuit Health Consultation include a submission "On Indian Health and Canadian Health Care System", "Indian Health _Dawn of the New Era", "Community Supportive Health" and "Traditional Indian Health and Nutrition". These four articles all emphasize the need for the Indian people to return to self-care and preventive medicine. The authors deplore the kind of health care that has arrived with the white man.

White medicine is seen a curative, but not preventive. Rather than dealing with health in a wholistic manner, as a matter of one's whole life-situation, white medicine treats symptoms, usually with polls. The introduction of processed food by the white man has had a negative effect on Indian health, and the authors illustrated their point by citing many case histories.

All four articles make similar recommendations. They call for a health care system that is more accountable to the people it services. This can happen, the authors suggest, through community based health centers, and Indian participation in health services. "Informed self-care should be the main goal of a health program". Indian participation and/or control is important for the authors of the four articles, in order that a renewed health "system" can serve Native needs.