INVITED KEYNOTE: AN OVERVIEW OF INDIGENOUS CHILDREN’S HEALTH INEQUITIES IN CANADA WITH A FOCUS ON THE IMPACT OF THE ALBERTA TAR SANDS & DEVELOPMENT ON THE LUBICON CREE TERRITORY; HIGHLIGHTING THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND OBSERVATIONS OF CUMULATIVE IMPACT ON THEIR FAMILY’S HEALTH

Underlying the Indigenous knowledge approach is the belief that determinants of health, whether economic, political, jurisdictional, environmental or historical, are impacted by past and present colonialism in unique ways for any given Indigenous individual, community or nation. Indigenous people's health is not solely socially determined, nor is adding colonialism to social determinants of health framework sufficient to analyze and understand the realities of Indigenous children’s health. The challenge for a determinants of health framework that is responsive to Indigenous peoples' health inequities is to ensure complexity and nuance, to not lose sight of community utility, while focusing on the ongoing impact of oil developments, logging and dirty oil “known as the Tar Sands” is interconnected to the ongoing trauma the Lubicon experience within a holistic framework. The loss of their hunting culture which was in full practice until 1980, is recognized by experts including the United Nations to be the most intact hunting society in Canada until the “road” was built into their settlement bringing unacceptable devastation as cited by the U.N. The rapid pace of multi-national mega-developments in their ancestral hunting grounds is destroying every aspect of land and lives. The rise of disease in children such as T.B to cancers will be explored. The Lubicon are also a guide for resiliency in their deteriorated land and health. The web of relationships, articulated in and a holistic framework includes the interconnection between the land, animal and plant life; spiritual relations within their societies world-view demonstrates how the children are struggling to survive. A statistical overview of the Indigenous children’s health in Canada will demonstrate how recent influx of funds and services has not improved health inequities. This presentation will highlight both the problems and solutions through health research within an Indigenous knowledge paradigm.