Pharmacy Colonization Report

This report was prepared to illustrate the historic and modern relationships between pharmacy as a discipline, settler colonialism, and Indigenous nations. As an early finding from our community engagement with partners, there was an ask from Elders, Knowledge Keepers and community members for our team to prepare a document that identified pharmacy’s contributions to colonization, both past and present. It is intended to serve as a primer, providing context for pharmacy students and professionals to better understand their discipline, its legacy, and its modern-day impacts on Indigenous people, families, and communities. Pharmacists have a responsibility not only to study medication therapy but also to study the history of healthcare and its impacts on Indigenous peoples in particular, who experience significant health disparities when compared to settler populations.1 This report is intended to serve as a starting point for pharmacy students and professionals to begin that understanding and was utilized by our team to ground us, prior to engaging in our project, “Uprooting Pharmacy: A Two-Eyed Seeing Path for Change.”