Language improves health and wellbeing in Indigenous communities: A scoping review

Abstract

Introduction: Indigenous languages in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States are endangered due to colonial policies which promote English language dominance. While Indigenous communities know the importance of language for their wellbeing, this topic has only recently received attention in scholarship and public policy. This scoping review synthesizes and assesses existing literature on the links between the vitality of Indigenous languages and health or wellness in four English-speaking settler colonial countries.

Methods: Our interdisciplinary research team followed JBI methodology for scoping reviews. Key databases searched included MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature. Searches were restricted to English language literature. The last search was on February 8, 2021. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to categorize and elucidate the nature of the links reported.

Results: Over 10,000 records were reviewed and 262 met the inclusion criteria - 70 % academic and 30 % gray literature. The largest number of studies focus on Canadian contexts (40.1 %). 78 % of the original research studies report only supportive links between Indigenous languages and health, while 98 % of the literature reviews report supportive links. The most significant aspects of health reported to be positively related to language are outcomes from health care, education and promotion initiatives; overall health, wellness, resilience and healing; and mental, cognitive, and psychological health and development. The results of the remaining original research studies are mixed (10 %), statistically non-significant (6 %), adverse (5 %) and neutral (1 %).

Conclusions: The results of this scoping review suggest that a vast body of academic and gray literature exists to support that language is a determinant of health for Indigenous peoples in the contexts studied. Recommendations for harnessing the healing effects of language include increasing tangible support to language programs, delivering linguistically tailored health care, and advancing knowledge through community-engaged research and education.

Keywords

Indigenous health / Language revitalization / Language reclamation / Scoping review / Public health

Funding

This research was supported in part by a University of British Columbia Language Sciences Grant for Catalyzing Research Clusters (MT and Dr. July Illes). LH held funding from a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarship Master’s Award (#6556) and a W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics Graduate Fellowship. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Harding Louise: Writing - original draft, Visualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. DeCaire Ryan: Writing - review & editing, Methodology, Conceptualization. Ellis Ursula: Writing - review & editing, Methodology. Delaurier-Lyle Karleen: Writing - review & editing, Methodology. Schillo Julia: Writing - review & editing, Investigation. Turin Mark: Writing - original draft, Supervision, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Mark Turin reports financial support was provided by University of British Columbia Language Sciences Institute. Louise Harding reports financial support was provided by Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Louise Harding reports financial support was provided by The University of British Columbia W Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge Judy Illes, Sarah Dupont, and other colleagues and students who supported and enabled various stages of this project. We thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their constructive and helpful feedback. The University of British Columbia Point Grey campus where many of the authors work is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded homelands of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking x^ʷməθk^ʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the online version at doi:10.1016/j.laheal.2025.100047.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

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