Indigenous Peoples continue to carry forward enduring knowledge systems, cultures, languages, and ways of relating that have been nurtured and sustained over generations across Turtle Island. These living systems reflect the strength, continuity, and presence of Indigenous communities today while continuing to offer vital teachings for resilience, wellbeing, and healing. It is within this living context that June, recognized as National Indigenous History Month, and specifically June 21st honoured as National Indigenous Peoples Day, invites reflection. 

We can channel this call for reflection through acknowledging and celebrating the histories, cultures, contributions, and enduring presence of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples. Increasingly, this month also creates space for deeper reflection on reconciliation, belonging, and the relationships required to move us beyond symbolic gestures toward reconciliation that is relational, reciprocal, and capable of reshaping systems. 

Within health care, reconciliation has often focused on addressing disparities experienced by Indigenous Peoples.  Across Ontario, hospitals and health care organizations have developed Indigenous Health strategies, introduced cultural safety training, strengthened community partnerships, and implemented initiatives aimed at improving patient experience while responding to histories of mistrust and systemic harm. Although these efforts certainly matter, they also invite a broader question:  

What would it mean to move beyond improving Indigenous experiences within systems not built by, for, or with Indigenous Peoples, and instead embrace meaningful inclusion and relationships as forces that transform those systems themselves?  

As Indigenous leadership, health human resources, and community relationships continue to grow within health care, reconciliation is beginning to shift. The presence of Indigenous voices within systems is not only expanding participation, it is also expanding understanding and opening space for new ways of thinking about care, relationships and healing. 

At St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, reconciliation has been explored not only as a set of initiatives, but as an opportunity to rethink how relationships themselves shape healing, leadership, organizational culture, and care environments. This has required moving beyond programming alone and into deeper reflection on how care is experienced and created through relationship. 

This evolving perspective is what I refer to as Two-Eyed Healing. A concept that stems from Two-Eyed Seeing, first shared by Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall, which encourages perceiving the world through different cultural lenses. It involves learning from the strengths of both Indigenous and Western knowledge systems, bringing them together in ways that create a fuller understanding, without one way diminishing or dominating over another. 

Similarly, Two-Eyed Healing is a relational approach applied to care and healing that centres reconciliation and relationships, bringing Indigenous and Western ways of knowing together through reciprocity, responsibility, and accountability. It is the process of exploring what is possible when Indigenous perspectives are not only included, but embraced to influence how systems understand relationships, responsiveness, wellbeing, care, and healing itself. 

Because healing is relational. 

It is expressed not only through clinical care, but through trust, belonging, and the quality of relationships within care environments. For Indigenous Peoples, this can mean trusting enough to share, despite histories of extraction, erasure, and misunderstanding. For systems, it can mean making room for ways of knowing and caring that may feel unfamiliar particularly when they challenge long standing assumptions about health care delivery. 

Yet it is within relationship that healing takes shape. 

Healing is influenced by whether people feel safe, respected, seen, and valued.  These experiences influence how individuals and communities engage with health care systems and how care itself is understood. 

Health care systems have long been structured through hierarchy, specialization, efficiency, and standardized approaches to evidence-informed care. Two-Eyed Healing does not seek to displace these foundations rather it expands what becomes possible by holding them alongside relational, holistic, and community-centred ways of understanding wellbeing. 

At St. Joseph’s, Indigenous relationship building has influenced more than Indigenous programming. It has helped prompt broader reflection on how systems function, how they might evolve, and how care can be more adaptive, responsive, and connected to the communities we serve. 

These relationships have helped shape St. Joseph’s Strategic Plan into one that is circular, dynamic, and grounded in the mission of the founding Sisters to care with “Unstoppable Compassion.” This reflects a shift from purely static or hierarchical models toward approaches that are more adaptive, responsive, and connected to the continuously changing needs of the communities being served.  

National Indigenous History Month and National Indigenous Peoples Day invite reflection on what these relationships reveal. They remind us that Indigenous knowledge systems are not symbolic additions within health care but living ways of knowing that continue to offer insight into humanity, care, and well-being. 

Two-Eyed Healing ultimately asks both Indigenous Peoples and health care systems to take relational risks. For Indigenous Peoples, that can mean trusting enough to share despite histories of oppression, abuse, and exploitation. For systems, it can mean making room for ways of knowing and caring that may be unfamiliar, and doing so with reciprocity, responsibility, and accountability. 

When this happens, reconciliation has the opportunity to be reimagined to become more than a set of initiatives. It can transform health care itself and become Two-Eyed Healing.