The Indian Status Card as Regulator of Traditional Healer Access

AbstractFirst Nations everyday life is regulated in ways that are not always visible. One important example of this is the Indian status card's coordination of access to traditional healers through Health Canada's Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program. This article textually analyzes the status card as a regulator of access to NIHB traditional healer travel funding. This is significant given its role in transforming traditional healer access from oral tradition, cultural protocols, and traditional understandings, to a process mediated by texts, forms, and policies organized by neoliberal managerial systems.ResumeLa vie des autochtones est reglementee, souvent de facon cachee. Un important exemple de ce fait est la carte de statut d'Indien: elle donne acces aux guerisseurs traditionnels via le programme Services de Sante non-assures (SSNA) de Sante Canada. Cet article analyse comment cette carte donne acces aux fonds de guerisseur traditionnel SSNA. Ce fait a son importance: le passage d'une tradition orale, d'un protocole culturel et de comprehension de la tradition a un processus qui s'atteint au moyen de textes, de formes et de politiques organisees par des systemes de gestion neo-liberaux.PrefaceThis article is based on research conducted during interdisciplinary dissertation research studies that were completed in March 2012. Within this research, twenty-one participants were interviewed off-reserve in northeastern Ontario, including First Nations applicants, front line workers, Elders, healers, regulated health professionals and others. The Indian status card (status card), preapproval forms and the confirmation of visit to traditional healer forms were also examined using critical textual analysis. Drawing from the research approaches of in- stitutional ethnography (D. Smith, 1999, 2006) and indigenous knowledge (Thrasher, 2000 - 2010; Phillips, 1995 - 2009), this study took up the standpoint of those interviewed to investigate differences between how access to travel funding officially works compared to how it actually works when living off-reserve try to access it.IntroductionThe Indian status card is a regulatory text that exists within the hierarchy of textual organization to direct the activities set forth in other texts. This activity is to and standardize texts that enter directly into the organization of work in multiple local settings (D. Smith, 2006, 79). These texts transform individual ideas and actions into something that can be interpreted by organizations independent of particular people (D. Smith, 2006,82). According to Dorothy Smith, regulating texts obtain their authority from official bodies, such as federal or provincial governments.The status card is multifaceted. It has multiple layers which contribute to its ability to organize access to travel funding, and each layer removed only seems to bring one to another layer, instead of to its core. Even when fit within official designations of Indian status, this only creates eligibility for funding application, with no guarantee of obtaining it.The status card was created by the Canadian government to place First Nations within the pseudo reality of the Indian Act and regulate First Nations everyday life. Because of the status card, historical components of individual identity are superseded by administrative requirements. For example, within the social relations of First Nations, identity pertains to a person's clan, the First Nation to which they belong -are they Ojibway, Iroquois, Abenaki, Delaware? It also includes their noswin (Indian name), who their parents are, where their come from and whether or not they have children or grandchildren. Yet the administrative requirements of the status card render these critical issues of Anishinabek identity irrelevant. First Nations who do not possess such a card are often categorized, because of colonization, regulation and control, as non-Indians by the government, band councils and, in many cases, other First Nations people. …

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