Cultural Literacy Impacts Philanthropy: Why Public Health and Animal Welfare Can’t Be Separated in Indigenous Communities

Not long ago, an American-based funder focused on improving the access that chronically underserved communities have to vet care, told one of our sister organizations that using mobile veterinary clinics in remote Indigenous communities was “inefficient.” Their experience funding mobile units in urban U.S. cities made the comment understandable - but also revealing. A map and a few conversations with frontline providers quickly shifted their perspective. What seems inefficient through a U.S. urban lens is, in Canada’s geographic and cultural landscape, often the only workable model.

But cross-border misunderstanding is only part of the story. Within Canada, there remains a deeper cultural and historical illiteracy: a failure to understand how government policy intentionally created conditions where Indigenous communities could not build the animal-management and public-health systems available elsewhere.

Indigenous communities have been naming these realities for generations. What is new is that more institutions are finally beginning to understand them.

Under the Indian Act, First Nations were placed on reserve lands with limited economic opportunities. In exchange - while controlling and profiting from Indigenous peoples' traditional territories and restricting local economies - the federal government claimed responsibility for providing the essential services that communities on reserves could not fund. Many of those services never came. As a result, community animal management has become an unjust and disproportionate social determinant of human health in many Indigenous communities.

This systemic gap - created through federal policy design and still experienced in communities today - is explored in a recent blog post on our website that summarizes a Healthy Debate article on this issue.

This reality is too often misread, even by well-meaning institutions. In the absence of accessible veterinary care and population management, some communities have had to make extremely difficult decisions to keep children safe. It is not a moral failing. It is a policy outcome.

Through Increased ACCESS and our Indigenous SPCA initiative, we are working with Nations to build Indigenous-led, culturally grounded systems that include access to mobile veterinary clinics, community-designed infrastructure, safe dog-housing spaces, and approaches rooted in teachings, Elders’ guidance, and local law. These aren’t “animal issues.” They are public-health interventions.

These approaches are being shaped by Nations themselves, grounded in their laws, teachings, governance traditions, and community priorities. Our role is to support that leadership and help build the systems that make it possible.

For philanthropy, this moment calls for a shift: from funding symptoms to strengthening systems, from importing outside models to supporting Indigenous-designed ones, from charity to equity.

Canada is ready for this reframing. Many Indigenous leaders are already guiding the way.

If you’d like to learn more or explore how philanthropy can support this shift, visit IncreasedAccess.org.