Community and Indigenous concepts of and involvement with ‘health’ and how they contribute to achieving the SDGs

The Western approach to ‘health’ largely focuses on the health of individual humans with the bulk of funding going to the palliative treatment of diseases. However, this narrow approach is ill suited to deal with a growing list of existential threats now confronting the survival of humanity. The importance of taking a systems approach to ‘health’ is increasingly recognised, yet systems thinking is not new but has been nurtured and practised by Indigenous peoples including Australian Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, Maori, and Canadian First Nations for thousands of years. Indigenous peoples from within these countries have a holistic view of health that encompasses the physical, mental, emotional, and environmental spectrum of well-being. This chapter presents three case studies that provide examples of pathways that support the realisation of the SDGs through community-led and ecocentric healthcare systems akin to many Indigenous perspectives on ‘health’.