About

Indigenous Cultural Safety Committee

The UBC School of Nursing Indigenous Cultural Safety Committee’s mandate is to promote Indigenous People’s human rights, health equity, and social justice by overseeing the UBC Indigenous Strategic Plan (2020) implementation and ending anti-Indigenous racism and discrimination within the School of Nursing. Our Goals are also guided by the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action (2015), United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, The Murdered & Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (MMIWG) Calls for Justice, and the In Plain Sight report recommendations.

Our Purpose

The overall purpose of the Indigenous Cultural Safety Committee is to provide the School of Nursing with wide consultation and strategic guidance in relation to these particular areas:

  • Undergraduate and graduate curricula.
  • Student experiences and support from pre-admission, recruitment, admissions, program completion and graduation.
  • Faculty experience, including recruitment, engagement and development across teaching and research streams.
  • Research and related activities.
  • Representation of the School of Nursing (SON) within UBC and Applied Science (APSC) strategic Indigenous initiatives. 
  • Engagement of the Advisory circle of Indigenous elders, knowledge holders, community partners, alumni, students and nursing and health care leaders.

Our Goal

Our goal is to help guide decolonization efforts in teaching, learning, research and service within the School of Nursing. By engaging with faculty, staff and students, our focus includes, but is not limited to:

  • Advocate for truth and reconciliation as outlined in the UBC Indigenous Strategic Plan.
  • Be equity-oriented, culturally safe and decolonizing across all structures, programs, policies and practices. 
  • Implement and uphold Indigenous Peoples’ human rights. 
  • Reduce barriers to entry-level and graduate education in nursing and equip the SON with resources and support for Indigenous students’ success. 
  • End Indigenous-specific racism and discrimination in nursing and health care. 
  • Create a psychologically safe environment to learn, work, and practice for Indigenous students, staff and faculty members in SON.
  • Prioritize harm prevention, and healing harms that may arise in our context.

Our Commitment

Taking meaningful and timely action to be accountable to obligations to upholding equity, justice, cultural safety, and decolonization.

Creating safe spaces for dialogue on cultural safety, human rights, and reconciliation

Be guided by the UBC ISP Implementation Committee to tailor and implement the Performance Measurement Framework to measure progress towards ICS goals.

ICS Collaboration with the Anti-Racism Committee (ARC)

The Anti-Racism Committee and the Indigenous Cultural Safety Committee are mutually invested in coordinated, collaborative action and advocacy to advance equity, justice, and cultural safety within and beyond our School of Nursing community. Our approach to decolonization and anti-racism is rooted in kindness and compassion for ourselves and for others, recognizing that we all have different histories, experiences, and understandings as we enter into our shared work.

Our goal is to welcome others into this work by creating spaces that invite and support honest reflection. We want to facilitate spaces that have the capacity to hold the inherent discomfort in grappling with difficult topics such as racism and colonialism, while continuing to actively work towards change.

We believe it is important to have two distinct committees – the Indigenous Cultural Safety Committee and the Anti-Racism Committee – that work both independently and in collaboration across a broad range of issues and initiatives.

We recognize that all of our work takes place on land that was appropriated from Indigenous peoples generations ago and that much of this land remains unceded and occupied. The colonial efforts to eliminate Indigenous cultures and peoples have been targeted and sustained, and the harms of colonialism are significant and ongoing. Thus, redressing these harms also requires coordinated, sustained, Indigenous-specific action and advocacy. At the same time, we recognize that a focus on Indigenous-specific issues alone will not address the myriad challenges and harms associated with other forms of racism and discrimination. We acknowledge the intersecting impacts of racist, colonial policies and practices that embed racism in structures, systems, and day-to-day experiences, and we are committed to action towards equity at all levels.

Finally, we recognize that our commitments to anti-racist and decolonizing practices may intersect with but do not fully account for action and advocacy needed in response to additional forms of discrimination and stigma – ableism, sexism, trans and homophobia, ageism, and others. We welcome opportunities to collaborate around the shared goal of making our School of Nursing community inclusive, welcoming, and safe for all.

Historical and Ongoing Context

Historical and ongoing colonialism and racism in Canada impact the implementation of Indigenous Peoples’ human rights and the promotion of heath equity and social justice. The UBC–Vancouver School of Nursing established the Indigenous Cultural Safety Committee (ICSC) in 2018. The mandate of the ICSC is to promote Indigenous Peoples’ human rights, health equity and social justice by overseeing the UBC Indigenous Strategic Plan (2020) implementation and ending anti-Indigenous racism and discrimination within the context of nursing undergraduate and graduate education, research, and service. 

The goals and purpose of the ICSC are also derived from the Truth and Reconciliation Calls for Action, United Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Murdered & Missing Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA (MMIWG) Calls for Justice, and the BC In Plain Sight report recommendations. The committee further seeks to align its work with practice standards for culturally safe and anti-racist care required by British Columbia College of Nurses & Midwives for all BCCNM registrants.

Unpacking Anti-Indigenous Racism

Implementing anti-Indigenous specific racism action in the SON and is undertaken in partnership with the Anti-Racism Standing Committee (ARC). Anti-racism and anti-Indigenous racism action in the SON are united through UBC’s stance on racism, the necessity of action in nursing and health and our shared responsibility to dismantle systemic and interpersonal racism in all contexts. Anti-Indigenous racism is distinguished from other forms of racism because to be Indigenous in Canada includes histories of over 10,000 years in this place, relationships with the place-human, animal, plant, land, water and spiritual unmatched by any other group.

These time and place relationships have resulted in the inherent sovereignty of the various Nations and sets them and the people in them apart from other Canadians. This status, eschewed by colonialism, has led to historic and contemporaneous traumas and health outcomes unlike those borne by most other groups, requiring a redoubling of our commitment to end this specific form of racism in the delivery of nursing and health care.