According to the doctor, students learn “from Aboriginal ways in terms of health development and being at one with nature.”
A professor of the medical college told The College Fix that a needed medical school at the University of Alberta teaches students about” widespread racism” and” Aboriginal ways” of understanding “health… and being one with nature.”
However, the program has prompted issues about a growing reliance on “identity politics” in care.
Dr. Joanne Olson, teacher and vice dean of care at the school, told The College Fix that she “absolutely” believes the” Indigenous Health in Canada” group should be mandatory for nursing students.
In a new contact, Olson wrote that students learn about the reputation of systemic prejudice against our indigenous people and the public health issue that has resulted from racism and racial trauma.
It is described in the course catalog as” the first step toward historically healthy interaction and practice.” The focus of this course is to introduce kids to a variety of historic contexts and modern issues that are relevant to Canadian indigenous health.
The school created the course in response to the government’s report,” Response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action,” to advance the country’s efforts to reconcile with the people and communities whose former private schools have had an impact on Indigenous people.
Olson said the , topics that they discuss include” ( 1 ) Aboriginal health issues, ( 2 ) The history and legacy of residential schools, ( 3 ) The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ( 4 ) Treaties and Aboriginal rights, ( 5 ) Indigenous Teachings and Practices”.
Because there are strong correlations between earlier events, stress, and the current health issues facing the Indigenous population, Olson said,” As Canadians, we have an obligation to incorporate this significant part of our history into the basic courses of all health pros.”
She added that students can gain a lot from “indian way” in terms of health promotion and being in nature-centered. These lessons can help us gain valuable knowledge as we attempt to address the pressing issues that confront us today ( climate change, mental health issues, intergenerational trauma, etc. ). )”.
However, when contacted about the program, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, head of the health business Do No Harm, raised worries about its intellectual emphasis. His organization aims to end medical identity politics.
According to him,” the true roots of this mentality lie in postmodernism, as adherents need to see the world through power relationships where men, especially white men, are seen as perpetually subjugating any people of color.”
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These convicted progressives believe that groups that they consider to be powerless envious of their economic and social standing. They then feel regret about generating envy in others”, he said. What is actually happening is a form of mass neurosis that causes the absurdities we see in this course.
Teaching history is important, according to Goldfarb, a former University of Pennsylvania medical professor, but “it must be provided with a context that reflects the progress that Western civilization has produced.”
Medical schools in the U. S. also are promoting this ideology, he said.
The students at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine made a famous pledge that “reveals the same kind of neurosis that plagues other fields” ( in which a land acknowledgment came before their customary recitation of the Hippocratic oath ).
The University of Alberta course was initially praised for a recent X-post by Quillette editor Jonathan Kay, a Canadian journalist, and for.
For @UAlberta Nursing students,” Indigenous Health in Canada” is a required course. An important subject. But as one student told me, it’s just” 4 months of self-flagellation led by a white woman”. It’s essentially an activist political propaganda film, according to sources. twitter.com/9k0H20e4u5
— Jonathan Kay ( @jonkay ) January 20, 2025
Kay told The Fix via email,” Canada and the United States both did terrible things to Indigenous people—including pushing them into reserves ( Canada ) and reservations ( United States ) that often consisted of economically marginal lands that racist white farmers, ranchers, miners, loggers, and urban planners didn’t want”.
” Unlike in the United States, many of these Canadian Indigenous communities are, to this day,’ fly-in’ hamlets that cannot be easily accessed by all-season roads, let alone proper highways or rail”, he said.
He said the land is a poor economic resource due to frozen winters, flood-prone summers, and contaminated drinking water, and jobs in these communities are scarce.
For a long time, Indigenous communities were “out of sight and out of mind”, he said.
” Conservatives typically didn’t care about these communities. And while progressives ( as we now would call them ) did care, such care was manifested in a deeply unhelpful political mythology, which pretended that such communities would develop into prosperous, egalitarian, autonomous, autonomous ( or even sovereign ), culturally authentic mini-nations if they were given just enough money to do so.
Recently, he said some progressives have become “increasingly cultish”, and the University of Alberta class is one example.
Kay said that nursing students” could learn an enormous amount of valuable information if they were exposed to actual Indigenous reserve-resident people who simply spoke in plain words about how life is in their communities.”
Instead, the course they are enrolling in” seems to consist in little more than a white professor holding forth with her cultish views and demanding that they be parotted by her classroom congregants,” he said.
” In fact, it’s become obvious that the movement’s most dedicated acolytes channel it as a deflected form of Christian religiosity. They denounce themselves as ‘ settlers living on stolen land’ ( or some such ), speak of their’ whiteness’ as a form of original sin, and insist that those around them pursue Indigenous’ reconcliation’ ( the term has become a catch-all ) as a form of inward psycho-spiritual purification”, he told The Fix.
Kay serves as a consultant for the non-identity-political organization Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism.
Monica Harris, executive director of the organization,  , said in an email to The Fix that while higher education institutions in the U. S. and Canada both have adopted “identity-based curricula”, Canada seems to be “more aggressive” about it.
We think this is due to the United States ‘ constitutional legal protections, which have helped to limit the scope of these practices, she told The Fix. FAIR is not aware of any U.S. nursing programs that require an in-depth course on indigenous health, for instance.
According to Harris, students should be “made aware of the negative effects of divisive, identity-based curricula that discriminates between different ethnic groups and cultures.”
The most powerful and efficient way to challenge these behaviors is through a single voice. There is always strength in numbers. In our experience, petitions and open letters to faculty and administration have been successful in reversing these practices”, she said.
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