The Arthritis Advocate, Volume 5
Truth and Reconciliation requires action from all of us
Cheryl Koehn, Founder and President, Arthritis Consumer Experts
Each year on September 30, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation asks people across Canada to honour the children who never returned home from residential schools, the Survivors who did, and their families and communities. It is a day for remembrance and reflection – but it must also be a day that strengthens our resolve to act.
At Arthritis Consumer Experts (ACE), we believe reconciliation is not a statement we make once a year. It is an ongoing responsibility. It requires us to learn and relearn, to listen with humility, to build respectful relationships, and to turn our words into meaningful “reconcili-actions.”
This responsibility is inseparable from our work in arthritis.
Colonial policies and practices – including the residential school system – have caused profound and lasting harms to the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples. Those harms continue to be reinforced by systemic racism and by structural and cultural barriers within Canada’s healthcare systems. For Indigenous people living with arthritis, these barriers can affect every stage of care: receiving a timely diagnosis, seeing a rheumatologist or other specialist, accessing medications and rehabilitation, obtaining surgery, and receiving care that is culturally safe and respects Indigenous knowledge and healing practices.
ACE has worked to help the arthritis community move from acknowledgement to action. In 2021, we formed the Arthritis Community Learning Circle, guided by Indigenous leaders and created to inform and educate non-Indigenous people and encourage concrete reconcili-actions across the arthritis community.
In 2023, the Learning Circle launched Arthritis Call to Action, an online learning resource focused on colonization, Indigenous health, Truth and Reconciliation, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s health-related Calls to Action. More than 2,000 people have engaged with the website and Learning Circle activities to date.
That work helped lay the foundation for an important new commitment. Through Arthritis Action Now – a Canada-wide strategy co-created by 20 Arthritis Ecosystem Champion organizations – the arthritis community has collectively reviewed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action for Health, numbers 18 through 24, and developed a shared response.
The response acknowledges the direct connection between colonial government policies and the current state of Indigenous health. It also recognizes that good intentions are not enough. The arthritis community has committed to raising awareness of structural inequities; advocating for equitable access to arthritis care; respecting Indigenous ownership and governance of health data; supporting culturally safe, trauma-informed care; valuing Indigenous healing practices; encouraging greater Indigenous representation in the health workforce; and promoting cultural safety and Indigenous health education for health professionals.
These commitments matter – but their value will be measured by what happens next.
Reconciliation cannot be achieved by speaking for Indigenous Peoples or deciding what their communities need. The way forward must be informed and led by First Nations, Inuit and Métis people, with non-Indigenous organizations acting as respectful partners and allies. It requires long-term relationships built on trust, accountability and reciprocity. It also requires recognizing the diversity of Indigenous Peoples and communities and understanding that the realities of accessing arthritis care differ across urban, rural, remote and northern settings.
For ACE, reconcili-action means continuing to create space for Indigenous voices, embedding learning into our work, challenging racism and inequity when we encounter them, and advocating for health policies and services that respond to the distinct priorities of Indigenous communities. It means reviewing our own practices – not only those of governments and health systems – and asking where we must do better.
On National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we invite every member of the arthritis community – patient organizations, health professionals, researchers, policymakers, industry partners and people living with arthritis – to reflect on their own sphere of influence. What can you learn? Whose voices can you make space for? What barrier can you help remove? What commitment can you turn into action?
We honour the truths shared by Survivors, families and communities through remembrance. We advance reconciliation through what we choose to do next – and through the sustained actions we take together, every day.