I Am Not Decolonized

Abstract

Decolonizing medicine and the movement to think about #decolonizemedicine (Twitter hashtag) involves a process of a troubling interrogation of medicine as a colonized enterprise.  One must examine the literature on what Indigenous people and scholars describe as alternatives to colonized medicine, using the lens of Two-Eyed Seeing (Marshall, 2018) and approaches like Coyote Medicine (Mehl-Madrona, 1997). We must be implicit and mindful of the Indigenization of medicine, systems, and health while struggling with our role as colonizers and with having been colonized. Fundamentally, one must be in a relationship and likely be invited, to do the work of decolonization.