Creating Cultural Safety

The concept of cultural safety recognizes that we need to be aware of and challenge unequal power relations at all levels: individual, family, community, and society. The reality is that many Indigenous students, faculty, and employees experience harm on a regular basis because their culture and identity is not respected or accepted within post-secondary institutions.

As you Indigenize curriculum, issues of cultural safety may arise. Learning about the negative experiences of colonization and oppression may lead to contentious discussions, the surfacing of racist attitudes and beliefs, and re-traumatization for Indigenous students. Integrating Indigenous content into the classroom could shift the focus to Indigenous students in a way that may feel emotionally unsafe.

As a curriculum developer, it is important to be aware of these potential impacts of Indigenization and to develop a learning approach that lessens opportunities for these impacts to occur. A first step would be to acknowledge that cultural safety is an important issue, and that the instructor will attend to cultural safety throughout the course.