October 4, 2024
The declining life spans of the Indigenous community is a cry for Canadian healthcare systems to change their ways. However, their solution is a bit too simplistic for an issue that runs generations deep.
The British Columbia First Nations Health Authority recently reported a six-year drop in life expectancies of Indigenous people, between 2017 and 2021, totalling a staggering 15.3 years less than non-Indigenous individuals in the province.
The quality of life for a community depends a lot on the quality of healthcare they’re receiving, so given the stark absence of Indigenous healthcare providers in our current healthcare system, it’s easy to correlate the two. Instead of filling the void by pushing more Indigenous professionals into a predominantly white field, Canada should question its own role in perpetuating their absence.
The desire to see more Indigenous people as healthcare providers and high-level decision-makers stems from distrust for Canadian healthcare and its practitioners. Canada’s medical system is indeed a product of Eurocentric, colonial practices that are steeped in a history of discrimination and oppression. As with other members of marginalized communities, the Indigenous patients’ health concerns haven’t and aren’t being treated with equal severity by Canadian healthcare providers. When patients receive incomprehensive care or get dismissed, they turn to their own community.