● For this discussion, you will provide a half /one-page response on a topic already
covered online.
● Your response will be based on your understanding of the topic/s being asked.
You can also refer to class lectures/ materials when responding to the question/s
posed.
Q1. In looking at the overall health and health services for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit
people, why is it important to look at additional factors such as the impacts of
colonization and systemic racism?
Q2. What did you take out of this week’s videos Colonization Road?
Response- 200 WORDS
LC
Q1
The reason to look at the impact it causes for Indigenous people to go into the
healthcare some people fear the health system because of what may have happened to
a family member. Such was being misdiagnosed as for myself it took over a year, some
racism remarks addressed to myself from the health care staff asking and me being
naive did not report it. The geographical location for some Indigenous people where they
are living they do not have the proper treatment for them to go to. As for example
pregnant women in Yellowknife have to be flown out to Edmonton to give birth, this
pandemic that happened some Indigenous were faced with going in alone. Like for
example for the systemic racism part my mother was diagnosed with Covid and
hospitalized, she speaks English but was timid when she had to go in alone to the
hospital as I was not allowed because of the rules they had in place. I spoke up and
pointed out to a sign they had when it says you can bring in a support person this is
before she tested positive, and they told me to wait in my vehicle. I was furious, but later
that evening she was admitted and throughout her stay of one month they tried to push
her into the ICU unit and sedate her as she was fighting for this is in hospital not for it to
happen my father got in touch with the Indigenous advocates in the hospitals and one of
them checked on her daily and talked with the doctors and allowed my father to come in.
It took the matter of my dad to stand up for my mother for them to stop and not put her
in ICU. This was because they wanted to open another bed in that unit, but my mother
held on and a month later was released and eight months later back to work fully
recovered. My mother was on oxygen, but they thought since she was not able to fully
speak that it was better for her to be sedated and the doctors were telling us, I said no
that is not your choice it’s the family choice but once the doctors knew that we were
getting the advocates involved they took a step back. I think of is the more medical
treatments for my mother are done to her the more INAC can give the hospital for that
bill.
Q2
I noticed that when natives talk about colonization they joke about it amongst
themselves because in Indigenous laugher can be seen as healing. The way that Ontario
made a road about colonization that’s ridiculous and mocking to the First Nations. As all
these years Indigenous people had to fight for what was theirs in the first place. As when
the treaties came along that is when the land seemed to be protected. As for Stephan
Harper when he said we have no history of colonization that is BS. The government
forcible pushed Indigenous people into residential schools, day schools. They made
mockery of the Indigenous people but allowing them not to go out to places they needed
passes to leave their homelands. People who say there is no colonization think again
there is, and the intergenerational trauma it causes as I am affected by this because I do
not know my native language but have taking some classes for it. I feel ashamed to be
learning this because I feel bad for my father who was forced not to speak it but he was
the one who helped me when I took my Cree classes.
