Embedding Indigenous knowledges and voices in planetary health education

Abstract

Internationally, the health-care sector has been slower than many other sectors in reducing its carbon emissions and broader environmental footprint. Incrementally, tertiary education institutions are changing their focus to integrate environmental and social objectives, including planetary health, into teaching, research, and how the campus is operated. Planetary health and sustainable health-care are emerging topics in the education of health professionals. However, they have largely been limited to specific knowledge rooted in western epistemology with ad hoc curricula that do not consider the complex interdependence of ecosystems and human health. Because of the need to prepare the current and future health-care workforce for planetary consciousness and related practices, in this Personal View we provide an innovative case study that uses Indigenist health humanities (eg, narrative portraiture) and arts-based education strategies to offer a different way of seeing, knowing, and understanding planetary health. Embedding Indigenous knowledges and voices into planetary health education is an important first step in decolonising learning in health professional education.