Description

A common global denominator of Indigenous people is poor health, and the colonial settler states that are charged with providing healthcare are perplexed, misguided, or in denial as to the root causes. Matthew makes the case that depressed Indigenous social ecologies like American Indian reservations are intentional colonial constructs designed to handicap the population, thus producing intergenerational populations of health disparities. The Western world has spent decades and millions of dollars on research trying to figure out why Indigenous people are disproportionately unhealthy compared to their colonial counterparts but has produced little to no answers. An Indigenous researcher proposes a social ecological approach that is democratic, decolonized, and designed to provide adaptations to colonization and climate change. Combining two facilitation strategies, Community-Based Participatory Research and Native Nation Building, under social ecology theory, the authors utilizes community gardens to be the mechanism to increase access to healthy and traditional food. Matthew shares research findings, insights, and lessons learned from an Indigenous practitioner with new perspectives and hybrid approaches to age old, unanswered colonization problems.