Library and Academic Services: Indigenous Health & Well-Being: Spirituality

Spirituality

Indigenous spirituality is a more complex phenomenon than the term spirituality alone implies. Spirituality is closely bound up with culture and ways of living in Indigenous communities and requires a more holistic or comprehensive research approach.

Websites and Documents

Anishnawbe Health Toronto
To improve the health and well-being of Aboriginal People in spirit, mind, emotion and body by providing Traditional Healing within a multi-disciplinary health care model. The Aboriginal way of life promotes good health throughout life's journey. Through the Traditional Healers, Elders and Medicine People, our songs, dances, stories , prayers and ceremonies, we are introduced to many dimensions of healing, growth and development.
Empathy, Dignity and Respect: Creating Cultural Safety for Aboriginal People in Urban Health Care
Many Aboriginal people take a more holistic approach that focuses on the integration of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being, an approach that participants said is often undervalued in mainstream health care systems. For many Aboriginal people, care for the spiritual aspects of health and well-being is based on ceremonies; although many health care organizations accommodate ceremonies, Aboriginal people don’t always feel that traditional practices are welcome and understood.
Indigenous Spiritual Practices (Ontario Human Rights Commission)
“Indigenous peoples have the right to promote, develop and maintain their institutional structures and their distinctive customs, spirituality, traditions, procedures, practices and, in the cases where they exist, juridical systems or customs, in accordance with international human rights standards.” – United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Resilience and Indigenous Spirituality: A Literature Review (Pimatisiwin, 2008)
This review is part of a special issue of Pimatisiwin dedicated to Aboriginal resilience. The overall objective of this special issue is to support and promote Aboriginal resilience in a variety of contexts. One important resource for this may be Aboriginal spirituality. This review summarizes efforts to clarify the concept of Indigenous spirituality and to isolate it sufficiently to measure some of its effects.
Indigenous-led Health Care Partnerships in Canada
Indigenous knowledge and healing practices endure today, despite colonial policies and continued systematic oppression. Exemplary Indigenous-led movements that centre on traditional Indigenous knowledge have become an important feature of the Canadian medical landscape, promoting cultural activities, self-determination, governance, language, medicine and wellness.
WRHA Spiritual & Cultural Care Indigenous Health
A Spiritual & Cultural Care Provider is available to patients and their families, and all region staff for support and Ceremonies. Many WRHA facilities accommodate smudges and other ceremonies. All faiths are recognized and WRHA Indigenous Health can connect patients and clients with the appropriate resources at each site.

Library Resources

The Four Hills of Life: Ojibwe Wisdom by Thomas D. Peacock
Location: E 99 .C6 P397 2006 (Located at NDC)
This book tells the wise and beautiful Ojibwe story about the path we walk through the seasons of life, from the springtime of youth through the winter of old age.
The Sacred Tree: Reflections on Native American Spirituality by Judie Bopp; Michael Bopp
Location: E 98 .R3 S23 2004 (Located at NDC)
The Sacred Tree was created by the Four Worlds Development Project, a native American inter-tribal group, as a handbook of Native Spirituality for indigenous peoples all over the Americas and the world.
Seeing the World with Aboriginal Eyes by Brian Rice; Jill E. Oakes; R. R. Riewe
Location: E 98 .R3 R52 2005 (Located at NDC)
This four directional perspective on human and non-human values, cultures and relationships on Turtle Island provides a comprehensive presentation of various North American Aboriginal world views and spiritual understandings.

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