Creating Culturally Safe Spaces
Fiona Hamilton – Trawlwulwuy Heritage Officer, Writer, Artist, Cultural Producer, Violence Educator, Ethicist and Activist. Fiona lives on Country in Tasmania.
Cultural Safety is a term used to describe a way of working with people of different cultural backgrounds that does not diminish, demean or disempower someone.[1]
A person should feel safe to talk about their own unique worldviews and cultural values without feeling less important than others. Cultural safety is a way of working rather than specific knowledge about cultures.[2]
Culturally Safe Spaces are built environments, places, areas, groups, dialogues or bodies of work that positively and proactively acknowledge, accept and provide for the inclusion of the full spectrum of diversity of participants in that space. Culturally Safe Spaces are empowering places of mutually beneficial exchange, personal and collective growth, and strength-based approaches.[3]
For Indigenous peoples and communities, Culturally Safe Spaces are places where imbalances of power, primacy and status are identified and structural adjustment is made to ensure equitable conditions are achieved and maintained. Culturally Safe Spaces are cognisant of, and proactively provide cultural safety at all levels of operation.
Cultural security on the other hand, speaks more to the obligations of those working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to ensure that there are policies and practices in place so that all interactions adequately meet cultural needs.[4]
Cultural safety and cultural security are critical components of Culturally Safe Spaces, and are distinct elements that work together to create spaces where not only outcomes, but the journey of creating and achieving these are optimal. To understand the difference between cultural safety and cultural security, and how these work together, consider the definitions below, and these can be applied.
(a) Cultural Safety
The concept of cultural safety is drawn from the work of Maōri nurses in New Zealand and can be defined as:
[A]n environment that is safe for people: where there is no assault, challenge or denial of their identity, of who they are and what they need. It is about shared respect, shared meaning, shared knowledge and experience of learning, living and working together with dignity and truly listening.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, a culturally safe environment is one where we feel safe and secure in our identity, culture and community.
According to the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency (VACCA) the concept of cultural safety:
[I]s used in the context of promoting mainstream environments which are culturally competent. But there is also a need to ensure that Aboriginal community environments are also culturally safe and promote the strengthening of culture.
(b) Cultural Security
Cultural security is subtly different from cultural safety and imposes a stronger obligation on those that work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to move beyond ‘cultural awareness’ to actively ensuring that cultural needs are met for individuals. This means cultural needs are included in policies and practices so that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have access to this level of service, not just in pockets where there are particularly culturally competent workers.[5]
Culturally Safe Spaces can be achieved by ensuring that cultural safety and cultural security is considered and imbedded in all aspects of:
- The built environment and design
- Governance
- Staffing
- Language
- Laws, policies, guidelines, procedures and dispute resolution
- Programs, training and resources
- Outputs, outcomes and bodies of work
- Agents, participants and representatives
- Community engagement
- Monitoring, and evaluation
Protocols and ethical guidelines for working with Indigenous peoples and communities form part of culturally safe practice, however, these lose meaning if the environment or manner in which they are implemented or delivered is not viewed or experienced as culturally appropriate, safe or secure.
Failure to consider, create, design for, promote and maintain culturally safe spaces has a multitude of negative impacts for Indigenous peoples and communities, and at many levels. This may include, but is not limited to, considerable health, wellbeing and social, spiritual, cultural and economic impacts. Often, the impact is simply one of Indigenous peoples and communities feeling misunderstood, misrepresented or challenged by conditions that are not viewed as empowering, fully inclusive or responsive to needs.
A simple example of the importance of considering cultural safety could be a team of designers wishing to engage with Indigenous peoples and communities to discuss a sensitive project. If the project team advertised a community meeting to be held with interested Indigenous people in “the Colonial Room” of a local function centre, this may prove a significant barrier in attracting interest in the project and suspicion of the project team’s intent.
A more complex example might involve the differences in between, and the diversity amongst, Indigenous peoples and communities themselves, and how this can be properly considered in all aspects of research and design processes.
A short term and limited strategy for creating culturally safe spaces, considering these factors, is to attempt to deal with Indigenous peoples and communities displaying significant differences in separate “silos”.
Often Indigenous peoples and communities are simply not included at all if participants are viewed to hold views or opinions that may create challenges for researchers or designers. This is often referred to as “cherry-picking”, or only including people who hold viewpoints that closely align to your own or desired outcomes.
Often, differences are seen as “too hard” or as “conflicts”, and attempts are made to isolate people who may present differences as a result. A siloed approach to engagement, research and design may produce short term outcomes, but does not utilise a strength-based approach, where improving conditions in which all participants can freely and actively participate are created and continuously improved for long term mutual benefit.
Culturally Safe Spaces are spaces where diversity is viewed as a strength that empowers, not as a deficit that must be catered to in a limited way. Creating Culturally Safe Spaces is a journey of listening, working collaboratively, identification of shared values, and active participation and promotion. Culturally Safe Spaces are dynamic spaces, that show continuous improvement and are proactively maintained.
[1] Nursing Council of New Zealand 2009
[2] Culturally Safe Practice Kathleen Martin 2014 Centre for Remote Health, Flinders University and Charles Darwin University
[3] Fiona Hamilton 2015 Tasmanian Leadership Training Forum, Centre For Sustainable Living, Tasmania
[4] Cultural safety and security: Tools to address lateral violence – Social Justice Report 2011 Australian Human Rights Commission
[5] Cultural safety and security: Tools to address lateral violence – Social Justice Report 2011 Australian Human Rights Commission