The cost of Indigenous cultural safety training: examining facilitator burnout and the impacts on health and wellness

Abstract

This research represents an in-depth exploration of the lived experience, demands and risks of facilitating Indigenous cultural safety and the impact it has on the health and wellness of Indigenous cultural safety facilitators. Using Indigenous and qualitative methodologies, this study gathered data from 11 Indigenous cultural safety facilitators in the Vancouver Island and Vancouver regions through in-depth interviews. Issues around training, preparation, boundaries and capacity within Indigenous cultural safety spaces were examined, as well as the resistance, harm, violence, emotional taxation, hardships and burnout often experienced by Indigenous cultural safety facilitators. With a focus on how facilitating Indigenous cultural safety affects physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellness, as well as emphasizing the high risk of burnout, this research demonstrates that Indigenous cultural safety environments can be unsafe for Indigenous cultural safety facilitators and exposes a need to explore further how social and structural supports can better protect the health and wellness of Indigenous cultural safety facilitators.