January 10, 2023
Nursing partnership gains 2022 Partnership Recognition & Exploration funding.
Assistant Professor of Teaching Elisabeth Bailey joins with community partner Dancing Water Sandy and School District 27 in Healing Together: Building Relationships to Decolonize Nursing Education. Elisabeth and Dancing Water gratefully acknowledge and thank Dr. Helen Brown for her role in inviting Dancing Water into the UBC-V Nursing instructors circle and for her support in making the connections that led to this partnership.
In 2022 the School of Nursing’s Indigenous Cultural Safety Committee started hosting regular gatherings with Indigenous nursing students from across all of our programs. Students have expressed how important these circles of connection and support have been as they navigate the many challenges of nursing school and engage in the complex, imperfect healthcare systems where they complete their practicums. Students have expressed interest in both increasing the availability of opportunities to learn about Indigenous methods of healing in the curriculum and in having the opportunity to engage in cultural practices and healing during these smaller group circles.
On November 22, 2022, Dancing Water joined an undergraduate nursing class of 125 students to share an experiential learning session. She met with the Indigenous Nursing Students' Circle in the evening for a smaller event. This funding will cover partial costs of the medicine kits (traditional teas, salves, and candles) that students create during these events. We also plan to host a similar workshop in the Spring term.
This funding greatly enhances our ability to continue this invaluable work of decolonizing our approach to teaching and practicing nursing both in our classrooms and beyond.
~ Elisabeth Bailey and Dancing Water Sandy
This project offers the first opportunity for Dancing Water (co-applicant) and Elisabeth (UBC applicant) to work together. Dancing Water has collaborated with School of Nursing faculty member, Dr. Helen Brown, and Ph.D. student Kelsey Timler on numerous projects over the last several years. She has taught about traditional medicines and healing in NURS 353 since the course began in 2017. Part of our goal with this project is to forge and strengthen relationships between Dancing Water and faculty and students here at the School of Nursing so we may continue to explore new opportunities for collaborative learning, teaching, research, and healing. This is particularly important given the mandates that we as a School of Nursing have to incorporate Indigenous knowledge, perspective, and voice throughout our curriculum with the goal of supporting our students to meet the new (2022) Practice Standard for Cultural Safety, Cultural Humility, and Anti-racism that is now required of all nurses in the province of British Columbia. We believe that Dancing Water's perspective, knowledge, and expertise are invaluable as we strive to create culturally safe, decolonizing learning environments for students and, ultimately, for the patients and communities they will serve.
About Dancing Water Sandy: Through NURS 353 – Promoting the Health of Indigenous Peoples, Dancing Water Sandy has been sharing traditional knowledge and teachings with students in the UBC Vancouver School of Nursing for several years. Born into the Secwepemc & Cree Nations in addition to Scottish ancestry, Dancing Water holds a Bachelor of Education from UBC with a specialization in Indigenous Education. Dancing Water carries traditional knowledge that has been entrusted to her from her family, her ancestors, her life, and her experience working with community. Community and family are synonymous with her way of being and she considers it her responsibility to share these teachings of Indigenous epistemologies and pedagogy through the lens of land-based learning & healing with those communities wanting to engage. Dancing Water has an ongoing commitment to the decolonization and healing of Indigenous peoples in Canada, across the intersections of health, justice, and education, all of which she approaches through a lens of land-based learning & healing. With this project, we hope to extend and deepen the relationship between our School of Nursing community and Dancing Water.
BSN Students engage with traditional medicines and remedies during a NURS 353 class with Dancing Water Sandy in 2021. Photo: Kai Jacobson
