Aboriginal Health &
Cultural Diversity Glossary

C – Definitions

Canada’s Health Care System:
“Canada has a predominantly publicly financed health care system. Our national health insurance program is achieved through thirteen interlocking provincial and territorial health insurance plans, linked through adherence to national principles set at the federal level” (Health Canada, 2003).

Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA), 1988:

Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI):

Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR):
“The objective of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is "to excel, according to internationally accepted standards of scientific excellence in the creation of new knowledge and its translation into improved health for Canadians, more effective health services and products and a strengthened Canadian health care system” (Reading & Nowgesic, 2002, p. 1396).

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health (CIHR-IAPH), 1999: “The Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health (CIHR-IAPH) is a national strategic research initiative led by both the Aboriginal and research communities whose aim is to improve Aboriginal health information, develop research capacity, better translate research into practice and inform public health policy with the goal of improving the health of indigenous peoples” (Reading & Nowgesic, 2002, p. 1396).

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health (CIHR-IAPH), 1999: “In the past and in the present, research studies and media reports have focused on pathology and dysfunction in Aboriginal communities and have often failed to present a true and complete picture of the Aboriginal experience. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health is a national strategic research initiative led by both the Aboriginal and research communities. This initiative aims to improve Aboriginal health information, develop research capacity, better translate research into practice, and inform public health policy with the goal of improving the health of indigenous peoples” (Am J Public Health, 2002, as cited in Reading & Nowgesic, 2002, p. 1396).

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health (CIHR-IAPH), 1999: “In response to a growing public health burden, the idea for creating a research institute devoted solely to Aboriginal health had its genesis in September 1999. A group of leading Canadian health researchers, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, urged the federal government to consider a specialized research funding agency dedicated to Aboriginal health research and capacity building. The group firmly believed this approach would contribute significantly to the overall health and wellbeing of Aboriginal people and hasten the elimination of disparities between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations. The researchers also envisioned a cadre of expert and emerging researchers who would form a Canada-wide network that would strengthen information gathering and sharing, leading to heightened awareness and improved health among Aboriginal populations” (Reading & Nowgesic, 2002, p. 1396).

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health (CIHR-IAPH), 1999: “The objective of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is "to excel, according to internationally accepted standards of scientific excellence in the creation of new knowledge and its translation into improved health for Canadians, more effective health services and products and a strengthened Canadian health care system. CIHR was presented with the group's recommendations and subsequently launched the Institute of Aboriginal Peoples' Health (CIHR-IAPH) in early 2000 “(Reading & Nowgesic, 2002, p. 1396).

cancer:
“Diseases in which abnormal cells divide and grow unchecked. Cancer can spread from its original site to other parts of the body and can also be fatal if not treated adequately” (National Human Research Genome Institute, 2003).

cardiovascular disease (CVD):
“Cardiovascular disease relating to, or involves the heart and blood vessels, origin of word 1879” (Merriam–Webster Dictionary, 2003).

causality:
“the concept of causality is based on the idea that one event is the result of another event. Theories about the cause of disease, for example, have evolved over time” (Clark, 1996, p. 100).

circle:
“Circles are found in the Native American cultures of the United States and Canada, and are used there for many purposes”

circle “healing”:

circle sentencing “sentencing circles”:
“Circles are found in the Native American cultures of the United States and Canada, and are used there for many purposes. Their adaptation to the criminal justice system developed in the 1980s as First Nations peoples of the Yukon and local justice officials attempted to build closer ties between the community and the formal justice system. In 1991, Judge Barry Stuart of the Yukon Territorial Court introduced the sentencing circle as a means of sharing the justice process with the community (Crnkovich, 1995, cited in International Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, 2002).

circle sentencing “sentencing circles”:
“Sentencing circles provide a space for encounter between the victim and the offender, but it moves beyond that to involve the community in the decision making process. Depending on the model being used, the community participants may range from justice system personnel to anyone in the community concerned about the crime. Everyone present, the victim, victim’s family, the offender, offender’s family, and community representatives are given a voice in the proceedings. Participants typically speak as they pass a “talking piece” around the circle” (Coates et al., 2000, p. 6; Bazemore & Umbreit 2001, p. 6, as cited in International Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, 2002).

colonial:
“regal, royal, imposing, majestic, grand (Thesaurus, 2003).

colonization:
“An act or instance of colonizing; word origin 1770” (Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2003).

colonization:
“Immigration, emigration (Thesaurus, 2003).

colonize:
“Settle, inhabit, take over, lay claim to, populate” (Thesaurus, 2003).

complementary therapies:
“The U.S. Office of Alternative Medicine lists the following categories as complementary therapies: diet and nutrition (e.g., vitamin megadoses, macro-biotic diet); mind-body therapies (e.g., meditation, bio-feedback, hypnosis); traditional therapies (e.g., Chinese medicine, Aboriginal healing practices); pharmacological or biological treatments (e.g., chelation, homeopathy); manual healing (e.g., massage, chiropractic, reflexology, Reiki, shiatsu, therapeutic touch); herbal therapies (e.g., herbal preparations, aromatherapy) (Office of Alternative Medicine US, 1998 as cited in Canadian Nurses Association, 1999).

complementary therapies or medicine:
“The Tzu Chi Institute defines complementary therapies, or medicine, as "therapies that are used alongside mainstream medicine, such as massage therapy" (Tzu Chi Institute, 2002, as cited in Canadian Nurses Association, 1999, 2003).

complementary and alternative therapies:
“There are a number of definitions of both complementary and alternative therapies. Some refer to "complementary and alternative therapies," and do not separate the two. Others refer to integration, or integrative care. Some point out that each individual determines whether to use a therapy as a complement or an alternative to conventional health care practices. In many cases, therapies that are termed "complementary" or "alternative" in Canada have in fact been accepted practice in other cultures, perhaps even for centuries as in the case of Chinese herbal medicine, for example. The World Health Organization estimates that 80 per cent of the world’s population uses medicines traditional to their own cultures that would be considered alternative to North American, or Western medicine” (Canadian Nurses Association, 1999).

conceptual model:
“composed of abstract and general concepts and propositions. These global ideas and statements are expressed in a distinctive manner in each model. Conceptual model is a term synonymous with conceptual framework, conceptual system, paradigm and disciplinary matrix” (Fawcett, 1989).

conceptual model and theory distinction:
“a conceptual model is highly abstract....a theory, in contrast, contains more concrete concepts” (Fawcett, 1980, 1989).

Constitution Act (B.N.A. Act), 1867: See BNA Act

Constitution Act of 1982: “The Constitution Act of 1982 Act broke new ground. For the first time, the Constitution includes a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This has fundamentally changed the legal relationship between the people and the state as well as the relationship between the courts and legislative institutions. Aboriginal and treaty rights, previously subject to a variety of legislative infringements, were given constitutional recognition which has been held to put government to the test of justifying any future infringement” (Henderson, 2001).

consumption “tuberculosis”:
“A 14th century word; a progressive wasting away of the body especially from pulmonary tuberculosis” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2003).

corn “maize”:
“The Spanish word maize from 1555; Indian corn” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2003).

corn “maize”, “Indian corn”:
“By 3,000 B.C., a primitive type of corn was being grown in the river valleys of New Mexico and Arizona. Then the first signs of irrigation began to appear, and by 300 B.C., signs of early village life” (An Outline of American History, 2003).

corn “maize”, “Indian corn”:
“It is not known exactly when maize entered the diet or became a widely cultivated food source, but the combined results of carbon isotope and archaeological analysis indicate that maize consumption increased significantly between AD 500 and 1200” (Waldram, Herring, & Young, 1995, p. 32).

cultural acceptable:
“not appropriate but due to some factor, is permissible to be used/ implemented within the targeted community” (Burhansstipanov, 2001).

cultural appropriate:
“respectful, relevant to specific cultural and literacy issues” (Burhansstipanov, 2001).

cultural appropriate care:
“Culturally appropriate’ care in any Aboriginal setting anywhere involves presenting, in a way that these communities can understand and respecting their traditions, what modern medicine can answer” (Anonymous, 1998).

cultural appropriate care:
“There are four key responsibilities for nurses wishing to provide culturally appropriate care. These are: perform cultural assessments; use cultural knowledge; understand communication and form partnerships” (Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

culturally appropriate care:
“Nursing focuses on the well-being of clients. Clients can be individuals, families and communities. The building blocks of effective nurse-client relationships are caring, respect, openness and a client-centered focus. These building blocks are also fundamental to providing culturally appropriate care” (Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural awareness:
“Once we know what culture is, being aware of it is an important step. Culture is individual, learned and shared. It varies across groups and over time. A person’s culture is rooted in ethnicity and race but these roots never solely determine it” (Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural awareness:
“To provide transcultural care, cultural awareness and sensitivity are essential. Transcultural care describes the skills of the health professional in providing care. Transcultural care includes cultural assessment, respect for the individual and incorporation of cultural values into care” (Cooper, 1996; Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural awareness:
“Developing sensitivity and understanding of another ethnic group. This usually involves internal changes in terms of attitudes and values. Awareness and sensitivity also refer to the qualities of openness and flexibility that people develop in relation to others. Cultural awareness must be supplemented with cultural knowledge” (Cultural Competency, 2003).

cultural competence:
“cultural competence incorporates culturally sensitive, relevant, appropriate and acceptable concepts; cultural competence is a ‘process’ …not a ‘state’.’’ (Burhansstipanov, 2001).

cultural competence:
“The term cultural competence describes a process in which health care providers develop cultural awareness, knowledge, and skill in encounters with people of other cultures” (Campinha-Bacote, 1994; as cited in Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural competence:
“Competence - Nurses involved in providing care that could be classified as a complementary therapy must possess the knowledge, skill and judgment to assess the appropriateness of providing such care to any client, and to provide the therapy safely and effectively. Some therapies require technical skill; nurses who provide such therapies must be competent in the technical aspects. Nurses should consider: What is the client’s exact health need? What are the interventions available? Do I know the benefits and the risks of each intervention? What evidence indicates the effectiveness of the intervention? Am I prepared to anticipate the effect of the therapy? What is the expected outcome of the therapy?” (Canadian Nurses Association, 1999).

cultural competence:
“Cultural sensitivity and cultural competence have both been applied to health care organizations and individual providers. Both terms are sometimes used to talk about meeting the needs of culturally diverse staff and clients” (Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural competence:
“Cultural competence, is defined as a set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enables that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations” (Cross, Bazron, Dennis, & Isaacs, 1989).

cultural competence:
“Cultural competency emphasizes the idea of effectively operating in different cultural contexts. Knowledge, sensitivity, and awareness do not include this concept. "This is beyond awareness or sensitivity," says Marva Benjamin of the Georgetown Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health” (Cultural Competency, 2003).

cultural competence:
“Achieving cross-cultural competence requires that we lower our defenses, take risks and practice behaviors that may feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable. It requires a flexible mind, an open heart and a willingness to accept alternative perspectives” - Eleanor W. Lynch.

cultural competence:
“Operationally defined, cultural competence is the integration and transformation of knowledge about individuals and groups of people into specific standards, policies, practices, and attitudes used in appropriate cultural settings to increase the quality of health care; thereby producing better health outcomes” (Davis, 1997, as cited in Cross, Bazron, Dennis, & Isaacs, 1989).

cultural competence:
Within the Cultural Development Model, cultural competence is defined as “the routine application of culturally appropriate health care interventions and practices” (Wells, 2002, p. 191).

cultural diversity:
“Cultural diversity refers to the differences between people based on a shared ideology and valued set of beliefs, norms, customs, and meanings evidenced in a way of life” (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952, as cited in ANA, 1991).

cultural knowledge:
“Cultural knowledge includes learning about the health beliefs and values of clients. It includes how these influence their response to health care and beliefs about self-care in health and illness, the role of health care providers and hospitalization, birth practices, death and dying, family involvement, spirituality, customs, rituals, food and alternative or traditional therapies. This encourages respectful and open exploration of client attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and goals” (Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural knowledge:
“Familiarization with selected cultural characteristics, history, values, belief systems, and behaviors of the members of another ethnic group” (Cultural Competency, 2003).

cultural safety:
“A manner, which affirms, respects and fosters the cultural expression of the recipient. This usually requires nurses to have undertaken a process of reflection on their own cultural identity and to have learned to practice in a way, which affirms the culture of clients and nurses. Unsafe cultural practice is any action, which demeans, diminishes or disempowers the cultural identity and well being of an individual” (New Zealand Nurses Organization, 1995; as cited in International Council of Nurses, 2003).

cultural safety:
“A health environment that assures no assault will be made on a person’s identity” (Williams, 1999).

cultural safety:
“Cultural safety originally developed to address the health concerns of Maori peoples in New Zealand is useful because it extends analysis well beyond culturalist notions of cultural sensitivity to power imbalances, individual and institutional discrimination, and the nature of health care relations between the colonized and colonizers, at the micro, miso, and macro levels” (Papps & Ramsden, 1996, as cited in Browne & Fiske, 2001, p.127).

cultural safety:
“The emphasis of cultural safety is in transforming the attitudes, policies and practices principles in health care by gaining an awareness of the political and historical forces shaping the health care and social status of indigenous peoples” (Kearns & Dyck, 1996, Polashek, 1998; as cited in Browne & Fiske, 2001, p. 127).

cultural sensitive:
“respectful of the specific culture’s beliefs, practice, etc” (Burhansstipanov, 2001).

cultural sensitivity:
“A control orientation views cultural sensitivity as a tool for increasing nursing efficiency to provide care in spite of cultural barriers” (Registered Nurses Association of Nova Scotia, 1995, p. 14, as cited in Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural sensitivity:
“A humanist orientation to cultural sensitivity emphasizes understanding, respect, personal growth and communication” (Registered Nurses Association of Nova Scotia, 1995, p. 14, as cited in Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural sensitivity:
A holistic and responsive care orientation defines culturally sensitive care as “…knowing the total patient ... through cultural assessment and communication and, the delivery of care in a manner that is respectful, accepting, flexible, open, understanding and responsive to the cultural needs of clients and families ...” (Registered Nurses Association of Nova Scotia, 1995, p. 14, as cited in Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural sensitivity:
“To provide transcultural care, cultural awareness and sensitivity are essential. Transcultural care describes the skills of the health professional in providing care. Transcultural care includes cultural assessment, respect for the individual and incorporation of cultural values into care” (Cooper, 1996; Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural sensitivity:
“Cultural sensitivity and cultural competence have both been applied to health care organizations and individual providers. Both terms are sometimes used to talk about meeting the needs of culturally diverse staff and clients” (Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

cultural sensitivity:
“Knowing that cultural differences as well as similarities exist, without assigning values, i.e., better or worse, right or wrong, to those cultural differences” (Cultural Competency, 2003).

cultural theory (Western):
Woods (2003) states that “The Western Theory uses an analytic approach: separation of body, mind and spirit….Emphasis on disease and treatment. Impersonal, scientific approach to health and sickness” (as cited in Kent-Wilkinson, 2003).

cultural theories:
“Cultural theories of Aboriginal substance abuse allege transitional or bicultural stress and cultural loss precipitates abuse to the more exotic cultural predisposition to seek "visions" in altered states of consciousness” (Scott, 1994).

cultural theories:
“Cultural arguments suggests that Aboriginal peoples drink as a result of the pressures of cultural contact or acculturation” (Waldrum, Herring & Young, 1995, p. 267).

cultural theories:
“Culturally specific ways of knowing about health described by Ojibwe people in this study included the following: stories from the oral tradition, authoritative knowledge of elders, spiritual knowledge, "commonsense" models of illness and health, and knowing oneself” (Reynolds Turton, 1997).

culture:
“Culture consists of patterns of behavior acquired and transmitted symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of historically derived and selected ideas and especially their attached values” (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952, as cited in ANA, 1991).

culture:
“Culture is a set of learned traditions (both new and old) that help us in the way we perceive think about at act about things” (Burhansstipanov, 2001).

culture:
“Culture is the learned, shared, and transmitted values, beliefs, norms, and lifeways of a particular group that guide the group’s thinking, decisions, and actions in patterned ways” (Leininger, 1991).

culture:
“Each of us has a culture. Leininger defines it as “…the learned values, beliefs, norms and way of life that influence an individual’s thinking, decisions and actions in certain ways” (College of Nurses of Ontario, 1999, as cited in Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

culture:
“Culture has been characterized as: “… a way of life, a way of viewing things and how one communicates ... it provides an individual with a way of viewing the world, as a starting point for interacting with others ... all encompassing and reflects the assumptions individuals make in every day life” (Registered Nurses Association of Nova Scotia, 1995, as cited in Canadian Nurses Association, 2000).

culture:
“Culture is the framework by which experience, perception, and world view are patterned and given meaning” (Mendyka & Bloom, 1997).

culture:
“Culture is a complex frame of reference that consists of patterns, traditions, beliefs, values, norms, symbols, and meanings that are shared in varying degrees by interacting members of a community” (Ting-Toomey, 1999).

culture:
“Every culture contains within it a health culture that is integral to the cultural tradition of the ethnic group. The health-world view framework was useful because it provided direction for the foundational research of an ethnic group while it allowed latitude for the possible findings” (Reynolds Turton, 1997).

see Health Culture