The next public presentation of the Nunavut Research Institute Speaker Series will be “Doubleculturedness” a prerequisite for Inuit nurses: The importance of celebrating Inuit nurses and nursing students and using their knowledge and experience in education and health.

The presentation is by Helle Moller a professor at Lakehead University. Helle’s research interests include the politics of health and health care, the determinants and disparities of health, social justice, Indigenous and Arctic health care, health education and the anthropology of health and of nursing.

The presentation will be held at the Nunavut Research Institute on Tuesday, May 8 at 7:30pm.

ABOUT THIS PRESENTATION

Using as a lens the experiences and voices of Greenlandic and Canadian Inuit nurses and nursing students who are educated and practice in settings developed and governed by Southerners (Danes and EuroCanadians), functioning largely on Southern cultural norms (Danish and EuroCanadian), in Southern languages (Danish and English) Helle Møller explores what it means to become and be an Inuit nurse.

Møller argues that Inuit nurses and students are the Arctic health care systems’ most valuable assets. They offer unique knowledge, qualifications, and spirit to the Arctic health care systems while being affected by health care politics, a lack of permanent health care staff and high turnover rates.

These challenges are compounded by Inuit nurses’ and students’ need to negotiate the languages and cultures of the nursing field, the Southern systems and their Southern colleagues, with the languages and cultures of the patients, their families, and the societies from which they come.

Inuit nurses’ and students’ success, therefore, hinges on their possessing double cultural and social capital. This includes the ability to communicate in at least two languages and cultures, and in the field of nursing. It also includes the ability to understand, negotiate, and interact, using at least two ways of being in the world, two ways of learning and teaching, and two ways of perceiving the body, health, and disease.

Inuit nurses and students’ possessing the double cultural and social capital or “double culturedness” which allow them to have success in the primary, secondary and post secondary systems, are unique and among a small group of Inuit who are thus able.

While being part of this group they recognize areas in the systems that make their educational journey more difficult and disallow many of their peers to take the same path.

It remains a concern that not possessing the cultural capital of the previous colonizers disqualifies many Inuit in the existing educational system drawing on the knowledge and experience of Inuit nurses may help to change this.