Aboriginal Women and Home Care in Saskatchewan

While home care providers and recipients have already been identified as being marginalized by the policy making process (Morris, 2002), Aboriginal women are one of the most politically, socially, and economically marginalized populations in Canada. They experience multiple barriers to participating in broader policy decisions that directly affect their lives. Aboriginal women experience chronic diseases, poverty, and systemic discrimination at a much higher level than the general Canadian population. At the same time, Aboriginal women bring unique knowledge and expertise, based upon traditional holistic understandings of health, to the domain of home care. Therefore, it is extremely important that Aboriginal women become not just objects but subjects of home care policy and program development, so as to ensure that home care programming is shaped by their culture, values, aspirations, healing gifts, vision, and understandings of health.