McMaster Indigenous Health Movement centers Indigenous knowledge and land-based ways of knowing to transform health education, research, and clinical practice across Hamilton and neighbouring territories. The movement prioritizes community leadership, cultural safety, data sovereignty, and long-term reciprocity with Haudenosaunee, Mississaugas of the Credit, Six Nations, and Anishinaabe partners.
Historical and cultural roots, land, and colonial impacts
Local Indigenous nations include the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Six Nations of the Grand River, and Anishinaabe communities that have stewarded the Great Lakes region for millennia. Traditional health systems emphasized a relational approach linking land, ceremony, plant medicines, elders, and communal responsibilities. These practices foregrounded prevention, collective healing, and seasonal cycles of care.
Colonial policies including displacement, the residential school system, and imposed biomedical models produced intergenerational trauma, loss of language and medicinal knowledge, and disproportionate burdens of chronic disease and mental health challenges. Land dispossession and environmental degradation have compounded food insecurity and restricted access to culturally important medicines. Acknowledging these legacies informs curricular reform and institutional commitments at McMaster.
Mission, founding partners, and guiding values
The movement grew from collaborations between Indigenous community leaders, Elders, McMaster faculty, students, and local health institutions such as Hamilton Health Sciences. Its mission is to elevate Indigenous-led health education and practice while holding the university accountable to community-defined priorities.
Core values include:
- Relational accountability and reciprocity with nations and families
- Indigenous leadership in governance, curriculum, and research
- Cultural safety, anti-racism, and trauma-aware pedagogy
- Land-centered learning that reconnects learners to place
These principles guide program design, hiring practices, and partnerships that center Indigenous autonomy and governance.
Curriculum, pedagogy, and land-based learning
Indigenous-led curriculum integrates oral histories, language, and ceremony with clinical competencies. Land-based learning is implemented through seasonal knowledge exchanges, field trips on traditional territories, and collaborative projects with knowledge holders who teach plant identification, harvesting ethics, and land stewardship protocols. Pedagogy emphasizes experiential learning, reflective practice, and elder mentorship rather than tokenized lectures.
Cultural safety training is required across health faculties, combining anti-racism modules, trauma-informed approaches, and simulation that includes scenarios involving racism in care. Elders and traditional healers participate as co-educators. Assessment is adapted to respect communal knowledge transmission and multiple ways of knowing.
Community partnerships, co-creation, and services
Programs are co-designed with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities through memoranda of understanding that specify shared decision-making, benefit sharing, and long-term commitments. Reciprocal capacity building supports community-defined health priorities such as diabetes prevention, perinatal supports, addiction services, and culturally safe elder care. Community governance structures ensure accountability and local control.
Research ethics follow Indigenous methodologies and national policy frameworks, including the Tri-Council Policy Statement Chapter 9 and principles of data sovereignty such as OCAP (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession) for First Nations. Governance agreements establish data custodianship, storage protocols, and community review of dissemination.
Student leadership, clinical practice, and supports
Indigenous student supports combine mentorship, wellness services, ceremonial spaces, and financial bursaries. Student-led advocacy groups and health clubs lead community outreach, campus ceremonies, and policy campaigns. Interprofessional education creates service-learning placements where students work alongside community health workers and traditional healers to provide culturally safe care.
Clinical practice models integrate traditional healers through referral pathways, shared care plans, and policies that permit smudging and ceremony within clinical settings. Mental health and addiction programs blend counselling, harm reduction, and culturally grounded healing circles.
Land, policy, and institutional commitments
Knowing the land reframes determinants of health to include stewardship, access to medicines, and climate resilience. McMaster’s institutional commitments include reciprocal agreements with nations, targeted recruitment for Indigenous faculty, and curriculum reform to meet accreditation standards while honoring Indigenous knowledge.
Challenges remain: systemic racism within institutions, inconsistent funding, and tensions between biomedical accreditation and Indigenous epistemologies. Long-term sustainability requires dedicated resources, Indigenous leadership in governance, and policy advocacy at provincial and federal levels.
Lived voices and future priorities
Voices from students, Elders, clinicians, and community partners reinforce that success depends on sustained relationships, mutual accountability, and respect for land-based practices. Strategic priorities include scaling land-centered learning across faculties, advancing Indigenous governance of research and data, increasing Indigenous faculty representation, and influencing health system change through evidence and advocacy. Continued focus on community-defined metrics will ensure outcomes reflect lived realities and support healing across generations.