Call to Action # 24

We call upon medical and nursing schools in Canada to require all students to take a course dealing with Aboriginal health issues, including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, and Indigenous teachings and practices. This will require skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and anti-racism.

Why “In Progress?”

Association of Faculties of Medicine is committed “to addressing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, and putting the education and training about Indigenous persons’ health needs in Canada front and center. The AFMC Board of Directors has established an ad hoc Committee on Indigenous Health, which will advise the Board on strategic issues and it has also set up a new Network on Indigenous Health. The Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing have made “Reconciliation” commitments and member institutes have initiated programs.

Nov. 29, 2023: Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing releases Strategic Plan 2023-228 with Strategic Priority 1: Champion Indigenization, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Anti-Racism (IEDIAA)

Goal: Foster decolonization and Indigenization, and promote anti-racism, inclusion, and accessibility, to advance reconciliation and ensure full diversity among Canadian nursing students, graduates, and faculty.

Nov., 2020: The Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (CASN) in partnership with the Canadian Indigenous Nurses Association developed a framework of foundational strategies, recruitment and retention strategies, and curricular strategies for nursing education to advance responses to the TRC

Oct. 5, 2020 – The Canadian Indigenous Nurses Association (CINA) and Canadian Nurses Association have emphasized the need for a “mandatory” cultural competency and humility training program for health-care professions after the death of Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old woman from the Atikamekw community of Manawan, Que.

Current Status

In Progress

Call to Action
last updated

April 10, 2024


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