'The term 'cultural safety' has been a part of discourse and pedagogy in health and healthcare for close to thirty years, and in the last five years there is evidence of the term's being used in a range of paradigms, including allied health, education and design, engineering and workplace relations. In each of these contexts, cultural safety is understood as an empowering and transformative process for interrogating the architecture of systems that have been structured by white supremacist, cis-hetero, patriarchal and ableist paradigms. The work and practice of cultural safety requires those within the systems to scrutinise how they are complicit in upholding power structures and causing harm to those excluded or oppressed. Cultural safety is therefore, in part, a strategy to dismantle existing structures and support the provision of environments that are spiritually, socially and emotionally, as well as physically, safe for people, 'where there is no assault or challenge or denial of their identity, of who they are or what they need'.' (Publication abstract)
