The effects of historical trauma, community capacity and place of residence on the self-reported health of Canada's indigenous population
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2012
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Abstract
This research examines social determinants of health of indigenous peoples in Canada. The focus of the analysis is to examine the contextual effects of historical trauma, community capacity and place of residence on indigenous self-reported health. In order to do this I developed a multilevel modelling strategy and contextual level measurement related to historical trauma, residential schooling, social capital, cultural continuity and self-reported health among indigenous peoples in Canada. The individual level independent variables in the multilevel analysis are: age, gender, aboriginal identity, educational attainment, total income, and cultural participation. An additional analysis examined the contextual effects of income inequality and community capacity on self-reported health. This research utilizes data from the 2001 Aboriginal Peoples Survey confidential file. The sample size was 112,940 individuals (Level 1) nested within 206 communities (Level 2). The critical indigenous paradigm developed in this study supported the revitalization of indigenous culture and reintroduced traditional Indian medicine and disease causality into the analysis of social health. This provided a basis for the development of a culturally responsive and relevant research design for research with indigenous populations. Drawing on a combination of theoretical approaches, this research compares quantitative results from various theoretical lenses, including indigenous and decolonizing theories, postpositivism, social epidemiology, post-colonialism and post-structuralism. Results show a significant contextual level effect for the community capacity scale on self-reported health. It also shows that there is no significant contextual level effect for the historical trauma scale, but there are significant individual level effects for the historical trauma variables on self-reported health. A series of descriptive, bivariate and multilevel results are presented and discussed through the multi-epistemic lens. The research supports the need to connect individual health to their geographic and social context.
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Bibliography: p. 262-279
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Citation
Ahenakew, C. R. (2012). The effects of historical trauma, community capacity and place of residence on the self-reported health of Canada's indigenous population (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/4790