Health as a Proxy for Living the Good Life

This paper explores and elaborates on concepts of health expressed in Passamaquoddy-Maliseet, an Indigenous language of the Wabanaki of Northeastern North America. I approach the translation of these ideas into English carefully, with strict attention to the indigenous frameworks within which they reside. Critically engaging the translation process to create dialogic space enables language community members to express ideas with the integrity of Passamaquoddy-Maliseet health ideologies remaining mostly intact. In the praxis of translation by a community of speakers experiencing language endangerment, the complexity of indigenous language health ideologies emerges. Community members contemporaneously identify health problems and discuss healing, thus giving voice to the foundational process-orientation of indigenous ideologies. The critical approach to translation returns indigenous health beliefs and practices from the margins to the center. Explicit recognition of the active relational indigenous perspectives of health prompts critical reflection on the root causes of illness and injury.Acknowledgment of the unique Passamaquoddy-Maliseet identity supports more conscious choices about the reclamation of definitional authority and collective community health.