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A new �鶹��Ƶ initiative aimed at decolonizing healthcare in the province’s north has received the go-ahead following a generous grant from the Vancouver Foundation.

Led by Emily Carr’s Aboriginal Gathering Place and Health Design Lab, the Decolonizing the Healthcare System through Cultural Connections project will work to improve healthcare practices and systems that have historically marginalized and harmed Indigenous individuals and communities.

These ongoing harms, the grant proposal explains, are due to an inadequate understanding amongst many healthcare practitioners and policymakers of Indigenous worldviews, lived experiences and the impacts of colonial policy on the health of Indigenous people.

In BC, as in Canada more broadly, Indigenous people of all ages experience significantly poorer health outcomes than non-Indigenous people. This discrepancy is linked both to Canada’s colonial past and to barriers including systemic racism which continue to permeate the country’s healthcare system.

Policies that severed ties between many Indigenous people and their cultures, languages, land and communities have generated ongoing, complex and damaging effects on the mental, emotional, spiritual, cultural and physical health of those peoples.

“The healthcare system’s failure to meet the needs of Indigenous people is a critical social issue,” reads the Decolonizing Healthcare proposal.

“Indigenous people report experiencing pervasiv