Nursing, Indigenous peoples and cultural safety: so what? Now what?

Abstract

Cultural safety is a powerful nursing concept conceived by Irihapeti Ramsden, a Maori nurse. Today this concept is moving the nursing of Indigenous people in a new trajectory as the many articles in this issue demonstrate. Its explicit purpose is to consider historically determined power relations between nurses and Indigenous people and to bridge the differences that have evolved. Significantly, cultural safety finds expression in caring spaces that are equality seeking and rights oriented. The over-arching goal is the health development of Indigenous people. However, too much can be taken for granted when a perceived panacea like cultural safety emerges. (non- author abstract)