Wendy realized that there is a lack of trust in Western research by Indigenous communities

Transcript

A lot has changed for me both from how I see the clinical world and the health services that we provided as western colonisers to the indigenous people but also how I see research informing their health services and we – western research has moved ahead so rapidly, so rigorously, so strongly and it’s made so many leaps in knowledge. But what I see for the indigenous communities is because there’s just such a foundational lack of trust in any western knowledge that before they are going to sign onto the – you know this intervention is going to improve my health and my community’s health because it’s – yeah so that’s another piece that’s changed; but before – to finish that, before they sign onto that they need to trust. They need to first trust that work and they don’t. The bottom line is that they don’t, so it has to be adapted. 

The research knowledge has to be really translated and adapted to their circumstances and their situation and their community. So there’s a lot of work to make western research accessible from a culturally safe perspective, and so what it’s done to me as a research has made me realize that sort of the generalized ability may be possible for populations that are more homogenous or that believe in that process, in that research process; but most of the indigenous communities they don’t and they haven’t, so there’s this huge gap between western science improving the health of indigenous people because anything, you know be it right or wrong, anything that comes from a colonial perspective is looked at first with lack of trust and exploitation.

 

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