L'art de la rencontre inuite/non-inuite dans le milieu de la santé à Montréal
More and more Inuit from Nunavik are being transferred to Montreal for health care and face a regular system that is often described as unsafe and inadequate in the northern context. Several macro systemic conditions such as colonial history, prejudice, racism and discrimination compromise Aboriginal cultural safety. However, each encounter has the potential to transform this experience from a relational and systemic point of view. How can we support the emergence of this transformative potential and what are the conditions that hinder it? Several suggested that art could challenge habits and foster emotional mobilizing power. Considering the complexity and sensitivity of the Inuit/non-Inuit encounter in this context, this research project aims to document the process of this encounter based on an auto-ethnographic creative practice. The specific objectives are: 1) to identify the phases and transformations experienced during my encounters with Inuit at the Northern Quebec Module (NQM, now called Ullivik), based on artistic practice and 2) to explore the systemic, relational and personal conditions that took part in these encounters based on artistic practice. For six months I facilitated non-directed drawing, painting, printmaking and crochet workshops at the NQM which houses Inuit from Nunavik during their care in Montreal. I also developed a participatory installation over a year and a half at the NQM and the university to identify systemic cultural habits in the encounters. The installation took the form of two suspended steel panels, on which fabrics and strings were magnetized. The field notes and works produced during the doctoral project were used as analytical material. Inspired by the non-representational approach, I reflect on the processes of the encounter, as well as on the potential for transformation in interactions. Two moves were particularly striking in my process, giving me the impression of losing face at the scientific and artistic level, in a new and anxious terrain: the recognition of silence in my artistic practice, but also in my family surrounding the two World Wars in Europe, then a move of the work on the floor, destabilizing my representations of the hierarchy by moving from two to three dimensions. These moves were analyzed in their implication on my encounters at the MNQ. The notion of losing face led to a Goffmanian analysis of encounters, then making links between microsociology, micropolitics, and macro systemic contexts in a relational field, through affect. The analysis of the process and the analysis of interactions made it possible to reflect on the back and forth between non-representations and representations, i.e. moments of openness to creative possibilities in the encounter, and moments of closure or tendency to stereotypes and generalizations. These reflections are brought back into the context of health care to rethink health intervention with Inuit.
Inuit Aboriginal health system cultural safety autoethnography decolonization art therapy participative art research-creation