On values, culture and health

This week is Te Wiki o te Maori – and the theme is Kia Kaha te Reo Maori. For those readers not familiar with te reo, kia kaha translates to “be strong.” It’s a word people from Otautahi (Christchurch) have used a lot since 2010 and the first of the many events that have shaken (literally) our world since then. Te Wiki o te Maori is a week dedicated to celebrating and strengthening the use of Maori language in New Zealand. While the week celebrates the language of Aotearoa, it also helps us tangata tiriti, or people of the Treaty of Waitangi, remember that we have a place in this whenua (land). It helps me remember the values that those of us living in Aotearoa hold dear. The thing about culture is that many of us don’t even recognise that we have a culture. Cultures are the assumptions, practices, values, beliefs, habits, ways of being that we have absorbed without knowing we have (see here for a nice description of culture). We all live within more than one culture, irrespective of the colour of our skin – culture is not synonymous with ethnicity or “race.” This year “Black lives matter” has erupted onto the consciousness of thousands of people around the world. It’s as if, for many people, the whole notion of equality vs equity has never before been a thing. And it’s this blindness to social differences that I want to discuss today. Recently I’ve been talking about the way exercise i...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Pain conditions Professional topics Research Resilience/Health Science in practice respect values Source Type: blogs