Megan Muller

This research proposal explores the unprecedented role Indigenous values, beliefs and practices of healing have begun to take in Canadian health policy and service delivery. In exploring how practices of care can translate Indigenous approaches to healing into community nursing services, this project will be conducted in collaboration with a First Nations tribal council in Western Canada. Though Canadian health policy has become increasingly more accommodating of Indigenous approaches to healing as well as the specific health problems faced by Indigenous peoples, there is a need to produce research which explores how communities are striving to provide culturally appropriate care and how to evaluate the impact from the perspective of communities themselves. Taking this into account, this research explores the different ways care is envisioned, experienced and practiced by patients, staff and administration as well as how cultural sameness and difference is negotiated through practices of care. Using ethnographic methods, this research will focus on the acts of care which bring together individuals from diverse backgrounds, offering an avenue to explore how communities and organizations work together (or sometimes fail to) in striving for a greater level of wellness. Rather than focusing primarily on the sites of cultural conflict or health status deficits, this project interrogates the multiple, conflicting solutions offered in attending to the same, agreed-upon aim to increase access to culturally safe care within First Nations communities. This research will attend to the diverse and contradictory ways social aims are aspired to, as reflected through the relationships, practices and experience generated through concrete acts of seeking and providing care.