Abstract

This research paper accompanies a ten page zine that supports non-Indigenous drama therapists in striving towards achieving cultural safety within their relationships with Indigenous clients. The zine and accompanying research paper document my personal process of cultural learning about Indigenous clients and communities, and my understanding of their potential needs vis-a-vis non-Indigenous care workers. In these documents, I share what I have learned about establishing cultural safety from an Indigenous perspective, and the specific cultural needs of Indigenous clients, whilst connecting my new knowledge within the framework of Western therapeutic ethics. This paper consists of a literature review that discusses Western models of cultural care and Indigenous perspectives on health and cultural safety, surveying the positive and negative efforts that Western systems of counselling and therapy have attempted within Indigenous communities, and highlighting specific ways to reconcile these relationships between Indigenous clients and non-Indigenous therapists. In this paper, I review past research, present the steps of my heuristic process from data collection to analysis and, finally, synthesize my results creatively into a zine.