This highlights the multiple factors that influence Indigenous health outcomes in times of disease, said Jessica Kolopenuk, a researcher in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Native Studies.
“The truth is that pandemics are lived at the local and regional level are shaped through the forces of national and even global power: colonialism and imperialism,” he said.
In order to perceive the effect that COVID-19 can have on indigenous peoples, it will be possible to take into account the social, environmental and economic points that exist at the same time as the disease and aggravate it.
Colonial policies have traditionally contributed to indigenous peoples being disproportionately affected by disease epidemics, said Kolopenuk, who cited famine policies in the past 1800 and assimilation and institutionalization in the 20th century, adding residential schools, day schools, prisons, prisons and hospitals. and sanit.
“These other types of institutional spaces combined racial assimilation and cultural assimilation. Therefore, curing the diseases of the framework also needed to cure the evils of so-called Indian culture, to use the terminology of the time,” he said.
He said these sites and policies have helped shape the types of narratives (which indigenous peoples are inherently more sensitive to specific diseases and are more constitutionally fragile) circulating over indigenous peoples and diseases, Kolopenuk said.
“The threat points to infectious diseases are intensified by colonial policies. However, indigenous peoples are portrayed as the disorders themselves as more vulnerable,” he said.
Underlying physical fitness disorders, such as central and pulmonary disease and diabetes today, should be understood in the context of colonialism, Kolopenuk said.
“These old examples have shaped the fitness of our communities and populations right now, and are making others more vulnerable to the more severe symptoms of this new iteration of a pandemic.
There are also some immediate issues, said Kolopenuk, such as access to affordable food, clean drinking water and health care, that amplify the impact of COVID-19 on Indigenous populations.
“There are these very basic structural disorders for healthy living that simply do not exist for many Aboriginal communities and potentially aggravate the pandemic situation.
Governance
In response, communities have made strong claims of sovereignty, Kolopenuk said.
“Communities in Nunavut are blocking gold miners. The country of Haida asked others not to stop at its tourist sites. I have even noticed that other people living in reserves show symptoms at the end of their driveway, indicating that, unfortunately, their space is not open for Adores of scale. Matrix These are other degrees of self-determal country.”
Kolopenuk also highlighted the progression of responses to the pandemic through individual communities that are culturally applicable and politically self-determined. For example, he said, Maori have developed a system that provides education, data and resources to Maori in a Maori-designed manner.
In their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kolopenuk said, indigenous communities have the opportunity to take advantage of their governance capacity.
“Each First Nation, each and every Métis settlement, each and every Aboriginal netpainting has its public fitness plan and puts it into practice. So, if someone in netpaintings gets a positive result, what are they going to do? , who they will report and who they will care with, how will the kits get their networked paints, what lab will do the analysis, how they will paint with their provincial counterparts,” he said.