How colonial health systems marginalise arts-based healing—global equity gaps in arts-health research funding and policy
Original framing: “[Viewpoint] The arts as a global health resource: key priorities for future research” — The Lancet
Indigenous healing systems globally treat arts as *sacred infrastructure*—e.g., the *Navajo* *Hózhǫ́jí* (harmony) ceremonies use sandpainting and chanting to restore balance, while the *Sami* people of Scandinavia employ *joik* (traditional singing) for mental health. These practices are not 'alternative therapies' but *living systems* with millennia of empirical validation, yet they are excluded from global health research due to epistemic violence. The Lancet’s call for 'future research' ignores that Indigenous communities already conduct rigorous, community-led arts-health studies (e.g., the *First Nations Health Authority* in Canada), but their findings are rarely cited in mainstream journals.
The Lancet’s framing of arts-healing as a 'global health resource' in need of 'future research' is a *colonial echo*—replicating the same power dynamics that historically suppressed Indigenous and Global South healing systems.
The systemic insight is that arts-healing is not a *gap* to be filled but a *right* to be restored, requiring three interlinked corrections: (1) **Epistemic repair**—centring Indigenous data sovereignty and cross-cultural models like *ubuntu* or *Hózhǫ́jí*; (2) **Historical reckoning**—acknowledging how colonial health policies (e.g., bans on *ngoma* drumming) created the current funding disparities; and (3) **Structural redistribution**—redirecting resources from corporate wellness industries to community-led arts-healing hubs. The trickster here is the *false neutrality* of the Lancet’s call, which masks a power structure where Western institutions decide what counts as 'valid' healing. The solution lies in *inverting the gaze*—not asking *how* arts can serve global health, but *whose* global health systems have excluded arts in the first place.