Patriotic Science The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Politics of Indigeneity and Decoloniality in Sri Lanka

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (a global highly contagious respiratory infection) in early 2020, Sri Lanka witnessed an upsurge in indigenous discourses. These ranged from claims by western medical doctors that pirit p AE n (water blessed during Buddhist chanting) has scientifically proven health benefits to endorsements of a divinely inspired syrup. These discourses gained wide publicity and received state endorsement with the health minister consuming the syrup on national television. But by early 2021 these discourses had lost their lustre and the health minister contracted COVID. These "alternative" discourses nearly derailed the country's vaccination program. By 2021, many who backed these ideas had lost credibility and the state and public began to place faith in vaccination. The sudden public visibility of these indigenous discourses and their swift decline speaks to the complex politics of indigeneity. This essay uses the Sri Lankan case to argue that decoloniality, which has become a global theoretical trend, in some instances is insufficiently self-reflexive of how its conceptual premises are appropriated by nativist discourses. The fetishization of the indigenous can have devastating consequences. When Sri Lankan western-trained doctors spoke on behalf of a romanticized indigeneity they were appropriating the authority of indigenous medicine, which had historically fashioned itself as a "scientifically" valid hybrid alternative. When variants of decolonial thinking promote a radically "non-modern" ontology and epistemology, a similar process of romanticization occurs. I conclude with a call for a critical practice that recognizes how the so-called "modern" and "traditional" are more apparent than real and are deeply implicated in each other. I also argue for the importance of recognizing the significance of an agonistic critical orientation that is not resistant to knowledge based on its putative "western" origins.

Integrated primary mental health care in rural and remote contexts: The Australian experience

There is a growing burden of disease nationally and internationally from mental illness, both as a stand-alone problem and also comorbid with the growing epidemic of chronic, non-communicable diseases. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 and ongoing climate change sequelae have exacerbated these mental health risks exponentially, creating massive service delivery dilemmas globally. In many countries, people in regional and particularly rural and remote areas, bear a greater disease burden from mental health conditions, due largely to the unique stressors inherent in rural life and inequitable access to appropriate services. This chapter canvases these issues and includes a brief discussion of optimally integrated care, risk factors and needs specific to rural people, the impact of Indigeneity, the role of socioeconomic factors in general and mental health, and inequity of access to primary mental healthcare services. These factors are illustrated by focusing on Australia as a case study, exemplifying both generic characteristics and those unique to that country that are relevant to service delivery in rural areas. The chapter was accepted for publication prior to Australia's worst bushfires on record (in the summer of 2019-2020), subsequent floods in early 2020, and the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in February-March 2020 (ongoing). Most of the highlighted factors, however, remain the same -albeit greatly exacerbated by these extraordinary events. Information is provided in relation to the distribution of four relevant mental health specialties, with recommendations made-specific to Australia and also in the global context-with regard to optimally integrated primary mental health care.Across the settled world, there is a huge need to systematically roll-out integrated mental health services, using a number of modalities, to meet rural need. It is recommended that changes include: interprofessional education to facilitate team-based care;co-location of multidisciplinary primary healthcare teams;development and integration of culturally appropriate health services for Indigenous clients;mapping of required services in regional, rural, and remote areas;and optimal and strategic use of available funding and telehealth options. It is also strongly recommended that integration of lifestyle interventions be included in all mental health treatment, to facilitate optimal outcomes. These initiatives are now particularly pertinent, given the post-COVID "mental health pandemic" predicted by health experts globally. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

LEVELING UP ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION ;ONLINE IMMERSION USING GAMING ENVIRONMENTS

The recent COVID pandemic has demonstrated that distance learning is no longer a function of broadcasting conventional classroom content to a decentralized audience. Rather than perpetuate disengaged dissemination of content commonplace in in-person teaching environments, educators have aspired to elicit engagement with diverse and rich content available on the internet. This is merely a harbinger of increased demand by students and educators alike for more robust and interactive content. To meet this ambition, an initiative to create a virtual simulation for architecture students to immerse themselves in a historic Canadian First Nations settlement from centuries in the past to better understand the parallels between indigenous approaches to architecture and contemporary praxis. Drawing upon video game infrastructure, the downloadable content fostered accurate and detailed depictions of various building systems as reconstructed as a collaboration between architecture, archaeology, and game design faculty. Rather than simply presented with authoritative facts, within this highly detailed open world, students were able to engage and explore content on their own in understanding the commonalities with contemporary design strategies that provided a greater experiential learning capacity. © 2022 ACM.

Engaging the Social: Community Engaged Pedagogy in the Context of Decolonization and Transformation at the University of Cape Town(1)

Globally, higher education is at a crossroads on so many levels: funding, course development, who our students are, what knowledge is relevant for the world of work and beyond, what kinds of students do we want to graduate, and who are we as educators. All these questions (and more) have been around for some time;the current COVID-19 context however brings them even more sharply to the fore. This paper responds to the prompt about how we train professionals for the future so that they do not participate in systems of oppression and inequality. It was written in 2017 in response to a conference on social and epistemic justice in the wake of the 2015 student protest movements and was written collaboratively by an intergenerational group of educators working on a course in the Engineering and Built Environment (EBE) Faculty at the University of Cape Town, South Africa3. All of us have a strong commitment to social justice, and to providing engineering students with an opportunity to think about their professional identity through the lens of community engagement. While written before the onset of COVID-19, we believe that the arguments we make are pertinent to the current context. Drawing on the Honors' thesis of one member of our group4, we sought to reflect on and analyze our work in this context. In particular, the principles of multi-centricity, indigeneity and reflexivity (Dei, 2014) proved useful in making sense of our practice and our work together.

Movement Pandemic Adaptability: Health Inequity and Advocacy among Latinx Immigrant and Indigenous Peoples.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated longstanding inequities in resources and healthcare, stacked on top of historical systems that exploit immigrants and communities of color. The range of relief, mutual aid, and advocacy responses to the pandemic highlights the role of social movement organizations in addressing the ways that immigration status creates systemic barriers to adequate health and wellbeing. This paper conceptualizes what I call, "movement pandemic adaptability," drawing from a decolonial-inspired study including participant-observation (September 2018-September 2020), interviews (n = 31), and focus groups (n = 12) with community members and health advocates. Data collection began before the COVID-19 pandemic (September 2018-February 2019) and continued during its emergence and the initial shelter-in-place orders (March 2019-September 2020). Movement pandemic adaptability emerged as a strategy of drawing from pre-existing networks and solidarities to provide culturally relevant resources for resilience that addressed vulnerabilities created by restrictions against undocumented people and language barriers for communities that speak Spanish and a range of Indigenous languages. This paper presents how the relationship between immigration status and health is influenced by the local context, as well as the decisions of advocates, policymakers, and community members.

La Gente Unida: Latinx immigrant and indigenous health and advocacy on California's central coast

Anti-immigrant policies undermine the health and wellbeing of Latinx communities, who also face white supremacy and xenophobic violence. For many Latinx immigrants who are also Indigenous, these risk factors overlap with exposure to colonial trauma. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing health disparities and structural vulnerabilities. This study documents health disparities facing heterogenous Latinx Immigrant and Indigenous groups and analyzes immigrant health advocacy strategies. For this project, I developed a decolonial-inspired framework that prioritizes questions directly useful to community members, deconstructs settler-colonial norms in research, and centers Indigenous ways of knowing. Multiple methods provide a holistic understanding of the health needs/assets and advocacy resources for Latinx immigrants in California's Central Coast: two years of participant-observation (2018-2020), collection of news data (n = 148), interviews with community members and advocates (n = 31), regional focus groups (n = 12), and a survey of health needs and assets (n = 260). The patterns in this data demonstrate a crisis in the social determinants of health for Latinx Immigrant and Indigenous groups, in which both resources and access are severely lacking. The systematic effects of unequal access, lack of insurance, and discrimination on the wellbeing of Latinx immigrants include heightened anxiety, lowered overall health, and a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 impacts. Despite negative conditions, Latinx immigrants and Indigenous groups demonstrate a high level of resiliency. Advocates have mobilized California's political elites to expand public health insurance programs to include undocumented minors and young adults up to age 26. Demonstrating what I call "movement pandemic adaptability," community organizations share resources and translate public health directives into Mixteco and other Indigenous languages to address exclusions from care. By centering those directly affected by health disparities, this study shows critical gaps in healthcare systems and spotlights the capacity for communities to demand equity and health opportunities for all. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)