Fear is the heart of the health care system

Instilling fear creates control by the one who makes you afraid.
When we are afraid our stomach drops, our insides quiver, we shake as we pull within, and when we lack knowledge it’s to a place of powerlessness.
Assimilative teachings say we are not able to care for ourselves. We are to look for someone to rescue us, someone to fix us, to make us feel good again.
Often the health care system instills fear through manipulation, intimidation, and withholding truth until others control your health. Look at the labels/diagnoses used by providers and how you are advised of dire consequences of not following their guidance.
We are not told how well our bodies work. The focus is on how they fail us -- high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity. The list goes on.
Fear grows as we see friends and family affected by diseases. Soon we are scared of our own being. Soon we act as if we have no choices.
Contrast this to the holistic teachings of our healers and Elders who remind us how strong we are and how to help ourselves, how vision is the key to being well. They don’t direct our actions; they respect our right to learn our ‘lessons’.
‘What we fear, we destroy,’ Elder Chief Dan George said.
When our fear is our own body, we destroy ourselves!
Elder and Mi’kmaq healer, the late David Gehue said our minds can heal us: if we believe we can, we can. To achieve something, he said, we have to believe it in our hearts and minds first and then we will see it.
Think of ‘disease’ as ‘dis-ease’ and fear decreases. Disease is a scary label but when we alter the dis-ease wellness occurs -- what is eating me? Why am I worried? What can I do to change this; I can do that. With this addiction, what am I afraid to face?
Some health system supporters ‘educate’ us to think about our body as fixable by pills, a treatment, or surgery. One drug will fix the bad effects of another. Do as others tell us: swallow this pill, do this not that, follow these instructions.
The fix may not work; it may be too little or leave us more ill than we were. Too late we find the ‘rescue’ isn’t what we wanted or were led to believe would happen.
Lenore Sanderson, a 54 year-old Chipewyan woman, had a crossed eye. She was told she could have surgery to look better. With the language barrier she understood she would see better.
Although after surgery she looked better to the doctor, she was hurt and angry when she remained blind.
The heart of the system is fear of our bodies so we depend on others to make us well.
This system was and is part of the assimilative process.
The late Elder Jemima Morris of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and Wawakapewin said, ‘When I was a girl, we had fewer diseases. We used land medicines, ate from the land, lived on the land, and rarely had illness.’
Some sick people rested and got well; some were hurt in accidents and lived with the effect of that injury; some died.
Is that any different than the health care system today? Is the current health care system’s belief an improvement on ours?
This fear is causing destruction of the health system just as Elders in northern Alberta discussed with me 20 years ago.
Today, governments spend 45-47 cents of every dollar on health care. Costs are so high that services are cut. Salaries lead the costs: wages for doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators, equipment suppliers, construction of facilities, etc.
To meet these costs, governments exploit our lands to raise the money to meet the needs of everyone who believes in this system.
Health care assimilation processes and fear began deliberately with smallpox blankets.
As settlement continued, measles, tuberculosis and other diseases arrived to overwhelm the healing capacity of First Peoples. This was aided when reserves were formed; First Peoples were confined to small areas where disease could spread easily, food was limited, and land medicines could not support the number of people.
Our People were, and are, told through actions and words that we are flawed, inferior, less than, incapable of life.
Doctors told me they came to work with us because they would see diseases not seen elsewhere. In our hearts we know those views are racist, controlling, and serves care providers.
However, we have our strength and resilience; our ways still exist. We have age-old teachings for health and life: spiritual connection with the land and all our relations, combined with belief in the Creator’s ability to help us if we ask.
Chief Dan George also reminds us, ‘Knowledge dispels fear.’
We know that to be true from living on the land. When we know how to survive from the land, we know we are OK. The land provides what we need.
David Gehue often told me, ‘You can heal yourself. You have the power within. Drop the fear and trust the spirits and your family and friends who love you to help you live a good life.’