Deep versus Shallow Medicine: Imagining a New System of Health

At a recent screening of Johnny Lee’s documentary, “Canadiation: Impacts of the Doctrine of Discovery,” a good Christian man came to Johnny and myself before the documentary was over to share his views. While he appreciated Johnny’s work, he believed that Johnny - like many Indigenous people - had succumbed to a “victim mentality.” After some interesting and heated discussion, we came to some agreement that the idea of a “victim mentality” inherently implies that the current system (which is guilty of oppressing) is the only (or at least best of the worst) option for us to work with. 

His own newcomer family had come to Canada and, generally speaking, rose above being a victim to economic prosperity. Johnny’s assertion has always been to work for the current system makes you a slave to the system. The good Christian man had to agree that his family did indeed become a kind of economic slave to the current economic system even as they benefited from it. The good Christian man then stated, “But I cannot imagine anything different”. To which Johnny and I replied, that is what we are trying to do: start conversations in which a new imagination can emerge. I should mention that Johnny doesn't like the term imagination, because it implies something imaginary or unreal. Rather, Johnny likes to call it reality because it is more real and substantive than the way things currently are. 

As a hospital chaplain, I am fully immersed in the current system and I struggle to imagine a new reality especially as it relates to health care. I recently listened to a talk by Dr. Rupa Marya. She distinguishes between what she calls deep versus shallow medicine.  

She wants us all to imagine a world where different peoples come together as friends sharing their unique perspectives, abilities and ideas. 

Shallow medicine relates to our current system of healthcare.  It tends to treat individuals without understanding their history, context and the environment around them, especially the context of colonization, past and present. In fact, the medical system is very resistant to investigations into colonization. In doing so, it obscures the dynamics of history and power so society can keep things going without addressing them and, in the end, it is complicit in ongoing colonization. No wonder many BIPOC have poor health outcomes. In the USA, Indigenous peoples had the highest death rate of COVID during the pandemic (next to Black and Hispanic peoples).    

Marya argues that colonization is a primary cause of many diseases faced by victims of colonization, diseases which are linked to inflammation. These diseases mirror what is happening in the rest of the earth. Just as inflammatory disease affects the body, the “world on fire” caused by unbridled capitalism and the history of colonization is causing the climate to change. Our bodies burn as the earth is inflamed. 

Marya advocates for an economy of caring which considers the whole web of life as opposed to the current capitalist economy. In order to do this, we will need to imagine something new. She is not proposing the abandonment of science or current medical advancement. Rather, she wants us all to imagine a world where different peoples come together as friends sharing their unique perspectives, abilities and ideas.  It is “old practices coming together” in a new way. She asks what it would look like if Punjabi people came to the Indigenous peoples in California as friends with an attitude of sharing. How would that be different from how colonization brought peoples together? This new imagination will need to be fueled by artists and storytellers.  

I believe people like Johnny Lee are creating art in order to spark a new imagination, a new reality. For me the raw materials which can be used to construct a new imagination come from Scriptures and the continuing work of the Spirit. As 1 Corinthians 10:5 (ERV) states, we are in the process of “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” You can read more about this here. For now let me end with a quote from our already named artist and storyteller from Canadiation:

“It’s time we start over, we need a new beginning. Just as the developmental period of a child is sacred and requires a high level of intention. So too now, do we have an opportunity to rethink our way of being, and try to do it right. We need a society where high capital interest is not the primary objective. It’s time to rebuild a new economic system.

It is my hope through this work you are continually inspired for sharing your voice in the current paradigm shift. And in the Spirit of Treaty, please support movements for Indigenous Sovereignty and independence from irresponsible, corporate rule so that we all may one day coexist on Turtle Island, free of divisive socioeconomic structures. The reset button has already been hit.   

And if we ever wish to create that environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling world we all long for, we must take a hard honest look at the foundations of what our communities were built on and address such elements. This includes the whole of Christianity in stepping back and recognize their part in benefiting from such a one-sided history and start over clean.”  

Creator, give us eyes to see the beauty of your activity across creation, and the skill to sketch it into reality by the Spirit of Jesus.