ART AND WELLNESS: THE IMPORTANCE OF ART FOR ABORIGINAL PEOPLES’ HEALTH AND HEALING EMERGING PRIORITIES Prepared for the NCCAH by Alice Muirhead and Sarah de Leeuw Introduction Upon irst glance, the creative arts and health may not seem to have much in common. With greater scrutiny, however, creativity and human well-being – especially the well-being of Indigenous peoples – can be seen as having a long and productive relationship that holds tremendous promise for addressing persistent health inequities between communities and populations. Patterns of disease and the strategies for understanding and intervening into these patterns are changing around the world. Changes in understanding and interventions are bringing attention to broad and persistent divisions between people’s health, divisions which are especially acute between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. In addition, the causes and outcomes of disease are being re-examined within social determinants of health frameworks, creating new opportunities for research and leading to new treatment and prevention approaches. For instance, instead of ighting infectious disease through prescriptions or individualized interventions, health professionals are being called on to address and manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer through population health approaches that act upon the broad range of factors and conditions that inluence health (World Health Organization, 2005). In addition, sharing knowledge · making a diference partager les connaissances · faire une différence ᖃᐅᔨᒃᑲᐃᖃᑎᒌᓃᖅ · ᐱᕚᓪᓕᖅᑎᑦᑎᓂᖅ