Growing up in Gabonese traditions, I learned early that healing is not just something you do in a hospital room — it’s a way of living. It’s a way of listening to the land, honoring the spirits, walking with the wisdom of those who came before you.
But like so many others — Indigenous peoples, African peoples, and communities of color around the world — this belief was disrupted. Colonialism, Westernization, and generations of trauma taught many of us to forget. We were taught that true well-being, rooted in spirit, land, and community, was somehow less valid than Western ideals of health and success.
It is a wound that both my people and Indigenous peoples here in Canada carry — a wound that tried to sever us from our own ways of healing. Yet through everything, those ways endured. The roots are still alive, and the teachings still rise, if we know where to look.

Across oceans and generations, Gabonese and Blackfoot teachings echo each other. Both speak of a world alive with spirit — a world where rivers, mountains, animals, and ancestors breathe alongside us. In Gabon, the Fang people honor Nzame and the ancestors through practices like Byeri and Bwiti (Fernandez, 1982). In Blackfoot traditions, the Creator Náátohsí and the spirit world guide people through vision quests and the sacred Sun Dance (Little Bear, 2000; Bastien, 2004).

Ceremony shapes both of our lives. Whether it’s the Bwiti initiation, where sacred iboga roots open the way to the spirit world (Fernandez, 1982), or the Blackfoot vision quest where a young person fasts to meet their spirit helper (Bullchild, 1985), both teach that healing is a spiritual awakening — a remembering of who you are and where you belong.

Both cultures hold the land as holy — not property, but a living relative. To harm the earth is to harm ourselves (Little Bear, 2000). To honor the rivers, forests, and animals is to honor life itself (Fernandez, 1982).

But history has not been kind to these ways. Colonialism tried to silence them — teaching people of color and Indigenous peoples that our ways of healing, our ways of living, were somehow lesser. It brainwashed generations into forgetting that true well-being is not just survival — it’s connection, ceremony, community. Yet through everything, our ways endured. Our stories survived. Our ceremonies still rise like smoke into the sky.

I’m not saying that Western medicine has completely missed the mark. There is wisdom and knowledge in Western approaches to healthcare. But when they are the only framework being used, care becomes incomplete. True healing demands more. It demands a weaving together: the precision of Western science and the wisdom of traditional ways. Only then can healthcare become a place where Indigenous peoples, and all people of color, are not outsiders — but home.

Understanding these cultural bridges gives me a different lens when supporting Indigenous clients. I don’t impose my own traditions — I listen. I lift up their ceremonies, their ways of knowing, their stories. I make space for them to bring their whole selves into the room, without apology, without having to translate who they are.

Culture will never be something a client has to set aside with me. Every tradition, every language, every ceremony is welcome. I adapt to them — not the other way around. Because culture isn’t a barrier to care — it’s the bridge that makes healing possible. And it’s the bridge I’m committed to building, one client, one story, one sacred connection at a time.

Sources:

Bastien, B. (2004). Blackfoot Ways of Knowing: The Worldview of the Siksikaitsitapi. University of Calgary Press.

Bullchild, P. (1985). The Sun Came Down: The History of the World as My Blackfeet Elders Told It. Harper & Row.

Dempsey, H. A. (2007). The Blackfoot Confederacy. University of Oklahoma Press.

Fernandez, J. (1982). Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa. Princeton University Press.

Little Bear, L. (2000). Jagged Worldviews Colliding. Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision.