… providing that the results are actually reported.

Lakehead University-led research team receiving $1.2 million to investigate cancer prevention using traditional healing

A Lakehead University professor and her research team in partnership with traditional knowledge holders and Waasegiizhig Nanaandawe’iyewigamig Health Access Centre (WNHAC) are receiving $1.2 million in CIHR funding to explore the efficacy of using traditional healing to prevent cancer.

Dr. Lana Ray, Assistant Professor in Indigenous Learning at Lakehead and the University’s Indigenous Research Chair in Decolonial Futures, will work with WNHAC, traditional knowledge holders, and researchers from Lakehead University, Nipissing University and the University of Toronto to carry out the work over five years.

This project will implement traditional healing activities to address the impacts of colonialism in WNHAC’s service area. It will evaluate the impacts of the intervention through a pre- and post-design that will explore and measure risks and protective factors.

Using an Indigenous mixed methods research approach, this study will privilege Indigenous ways of knowing and doing and tangible outcomes for Indigenous communities through the implementation of medicine camps and traditional health practitioner visits.

…

“When we do this, we also begin to think of cancer as a symptom of colonialism, which allows for expanded approaches to primary and secondary cancer prevention.”

Colonialism is fundamentally about severing Anishinaabe peoples’ deep spiritual relationships to land. The anti-thesis to that is Anishinaabe systems of traditional healing that are grounded in a deep love and respect for the land and the knowledge that it possesses, Dr. Ray explained.

That’s *glorious.* Not only are they woke, they’re willing to put peoples lives at risk to prove it. And when it inevitably proves to be of little or negative value, rest assured that they’ll blame colonialism for the failure of their bone-headed superstitious gibberish.