Pathway 3 Cultural Safety

Abstract

Culture is inseparable from health, healing, and care. It permeates every aspect of the counselling process. Pathway 3 focuses on fostering cultural safety by providing pathways for health and healing that honour and centre cultural diversity. The authors move away from attempting to guarantee safety to fostering safer or safe enough spaces for collaborative therapeutic work, recognizing the uniqueness of each individual and the impossibility of fully predicting what safety means for each person. This includes acknowledging the trauma and understandable distrust many clients carry with them as a result of their histories of systemic and cultural oppression within healthcare settings. Melissa, Sandra, and Jessie consider carefully how intersecting cultural identities, beliefs, and attitudes of both practitioners and clients shape health and healing relationships, cautioning against unintentional othering that may arise from ethnocentric and eurocentric practices. Co-creating a sense of cultural safety with clients is a powerful way to reduce the impact of health-limiting social determinants, which often lead to healthcare inequities. This pathway supports intentional attunement to clients’ needs as a relational foundation for cultural safety and therapeutic work through three key practices introduced in the chapters that follow: cultural humility, ethical space, and respect for dignity. The authors underscore that the ultimate determination of safety and trust in therapeutic relationships lies with the clients themselves.

Melissa, Sandra, and Jessie are grateful for the offerings of these co-authors:

• Nubia Chong offers grounding statements to help practitioners and activists stay present in their bodies as they weather the collective trauma of the crisis in Palestine.

• Amy Rubin shares their insights into the nuanced ways in which cultural identity and belonging shape our experiences and sense of safety from their positioning as a white, queer, Ashkenazi Jewish settler.

Co-Authors

Melissa Jay (she/her), PhD, RPsych, is a cisgender nehiyaw (Cree) member of the Métis Nation of Alberta and lifelong student of yoga philosophy. She is a cisgender, able-bodied woman who moves through the world with white-passing privilege. She is a psychologist and associate professor at Athabasca University. Her work is centred in reciprocity and relationship, decolonized healing, anti-oppressive practices, and the integration of ancient wisdom and psychology. Her intention is to share trauma-informed, culturally responsive care, alongside her ongoing collaborative research exploring relational accountability, Indigenous methodologies, and ethical engagement with community.

Sandra Collins (she/her), PhD, is a co-editor of this book. She writes from the perspective of a feminist, lesbian, cisgender, woman with an invisible disability, who is a white, retired professor, and inhabits a privileged social class. Over the 25 years of her academic and professional career, she focused her research, writing, and teaching on cultural responsivity and social justice in theory, research, and practice. This is her fifth book on these topics, two of which were awarded the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Counselling biannual book award. She also received a silver medal for best e-book design by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. 

Jessie King (she/her), PhD. Hadiksm Gaax di waayu. Jessie has matrilineal ties to Gitxaała, belonging to the Ganhada. She is also settler-European Irish/English on her father’s side. She is an experienced instructor, facilitator, and researcher with a background in health, philosophy, and research design. Her areas of specialization include cultural safety, Indigenous rights and contemporary issues, research methodologies, decolonization and Indigenization, and instructional design. She is living on the traditional and unceded territories of Lheidli T’enneh.

Nubia Chong (she/her), MD, is a board-certified integrative psychiatrist, activist, artist, and intuitive embodiment practitioner. Her work centres people of the global majority and is rooted in sovereignty, interdependence, and collective healing. Her approach is guided by the wisdom of the body, the grounding presence of nature, and the power of collective healing. She believes true healing is both rooted and expansive, honoring where we come from while making space for transformation. 

Amy Rubin (they/them), MA, is a white, queer, Ashkenazi Jewish settler living in Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia). They work as a registered counselling therapist and artist, and they live with their spouse, teenager, and five furry animals.

Citation

Jay, M., Collins, S., King, J., Rubin, A., & Chong, N. (2025). Pathway 3 Enhancing cultural safety. In S. Collins and M. Jay (Eds.), Decolonizing health, healing, and care: Embodying culturally responsive and socially just counselling (Chapter 3.0). Counselling Concepts. https://doi.org/10.71446/sd86862525