Health and wellbeing: rooted in values and sustained through land and water-based practices

This thesis explores Indigenous perspectives of health and wellbeing grounded in values, relationships, and responsibilities to land, water, and all living beings. The first paper, Rooted in Values: Indigenous Principles for Wholistic Health, identifies key principles—respect, balance, reciprocity, care and responsibility, and interconnectedness—as foundations for wholistic wellbeing. The second paper, Beyond Proximity: Indigenous Land-/Water-Based Practices and Understandings of Health, describes how land-/water-based practices sustain health and require access to be more than a matter of proximity and a condition for use. Together, the papers explore how health and wellbeing are not an individual condition but a living process sustained through ethical, reciprocal relationships with place and community. This thesis highlights Indigenous ways of understanding and living health that offer pathways for more grounded, ethical, and wholistic approaches to wellbeing.