Advancing SHA’s Commitment to Truth and Reconciliation
“It starts with me,” said Joanne Petersen, Saskatchewan Health Authority Interim Health Services Manager at Assiniboia’s Ross Payant Nursing Home and Lafleche and District Health Centre. Petersen’s reconciliation journey is deeply personal. While in a leadership role, she recognizes opportunities for learning often come from positions of privilege.
“I want people to know that each and every one of us have the opportunity to learn and grow, no matter what our position,” said Petersen.
With support from the College of Registered Nurses of Saskatchewan, Petersen completed the University of Saskatchewan’s Building an Awareness of Cultural Humility. An article on meritocracy challenged her thinking about land entitlement and privilege about settler roots on the traditional territories of First Nations and Métis people.
“I believed my great-grandparents (Saskatchewan homesteaders) deserved their land simply by the hard work they did,” said Petersen. “However, at that same time, Indigenous people were suppressed and not given the same land offers, loans and titles. I am ashamed of the part my family played in the Sixties Scoop. I grew up with two Indigenous cousins and never questioned why they were in an all-white family. Their adult lives were filled with trauma and addiction, and they both passed far too early. I am heartened that as adults they sought out and were reconnected with their birth families, their people and culture.”
Petersen shared an excerpt from her final assignment, explaining how she will incorporate her learnings in her practice.
“I’m committed to ongoing learning about the truth, and it starts with one person shifting their thinking. I will respect the diversity of Indigenous ways of knowing and will advocate for trauma-informed practice. In leading by example, we can create comfortable, safe places. I commit to allyship, anti-racism and cultural safety as hallmarks of respect and compassion for Indigenous people.”
Joanne Petersen, Interim Health Services Manager at Ross Payant Nursing Home in Assiniboia.