Book Review: Healing Traditions: The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada Edited by Laurence J. Kirmayer and Gail Guthrie Valaskakis

• Main Author: Menzies, Peter
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 2010
• Subjects: American Studies; Canada; inuit
• Online Access: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsresearch/1096; https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/context/greatplainsresearch/article/2095/viewcontent/Menzies.pdf

In Healing Traditions, the editors have assembled the voices of 29 academics, researchers, and mental health professionals from across Canada as well as Australia and the United States. This distinguished panel offers an important contribution to our understanding of Aboriginal mental health issues and the unique healing processes currently underway in a number of communities. Kirkmayer and Valaskakis contextualize mental health in a distinctive manner, acknowledging how Canada’s First Peoples have been affected by colonization over several hundred years. We learn how historic social policies continue to affect individuals, their families, and the communities in which they live. The notion of identity and the social confusion these policies create are developed in several chapters. The heterogenic nature of these communities, with their own cultural values and experiences requiring distinct healing strategies for Canada’s Métis, Inuit, Cree, or other Indigenous communities, is elaborated on by the contributors. These themes are intertwined within each of the book’s sections, but rather than causing confusion, their reiteration reinforces the concept that practitioners must be students of history as well as students of their field of practice in order to engage effectively with Aboriginal people and their healing pathways.