The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic challenged not only the health-care industry, but also the public health infrastructure in new and wide-ranging ways. Environmental health (EH) professionals have proven to be an essential component of the interdisciplinary public health solution required to prevent, respond, and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Indian Health Service’s Division of Environmental Health Services is a community-based program offering a broad scope of environmental health services and technical assistance. Significant COVID-19 workload activities were recorded from March 2020 through March 2021. A total of 62.7% of the Division’s federal staff completed a 24-question survey in February/March 2021. Primary roles relating to community-based EH, institutional EH, and incident command system support/teams became apparent. Results indicated Division of Environmental Health Services staff provided critical leadership and used their established, trusted, interdisciplinary partnerships to help ensure critical resources and services were available in Indian Country.

This essay examines Jay Pather's site-specific work Cityscapes (2002) within a theoretical discussion of the conjuncture and disjuncture of space and race in South Africa. Jay Pather, a South African of Indian ancestry, an innovative choreographer and curator of site-specific works, creatively uses space to inspire social change by providing access and challenging exclusions—social, cultural, political—of black and colored South Africans during apartheid (1948–1994) and after. A progressive vision underlies his avant-garde work expressed via a hybrid choreographic palette of South African classical and popular dance styles, Indian classical dance, modern and contemporary dance. His choreography is performed across South Africa and the African continent as well as in Denmark, Mumbai, and New York City.

When British Columbia was founded in 1858, the colonial regime classified Indians as savage, on the anthropological scale of civilization, and then imposed on them civilizing tactics designed to create semi-civilized British subjects. By the 1860s the colonial regime feared that the growing presence of Chinese immigrants, whom they initially classified as semi-civilized on the anthropological scale of civilization, would subvert this objective. They therefore disempowered Chinese through the imposition of de-civilizing tactics designed to create barbarian aliens. By 1887 these combined civilizing and de-civilizing tactics had resulted in the reclassification of Indians as semi-civilized and of Chinese as barbarian.

The number and relative proportion of older Native people in Canada are both increasing rapidly. So also is a social problems discourse asserting that informal care of older Native people by family and kin is traditional, and highly appropriate today. However, neither this discourse nor previous research satisfactorily address the informal care requirements of older Native people nor the gendered implications that high levels of informal care provision may have for Native caregivers. Informal care is provided to Canada's non-Native elderly people primarily by resident wives and non-resident daughters, and secondarily by husbands and sons. Data from the pan-provincial Alberta Native Seniors Study demonstrate that Native people aged 50 or more have comparatively high overall care requirements. Older Native Albertans are poor, and make extensive use of some government income support programmes. They also make moderate use of medical services. Extensive dependence on informal care, institutional barriers and local service unavailability lead Native seniors to under-utilise other formal programmes aimed generically at the older provincial population. Native seniors are much more likely to live with kin than are other Canadians. Informal care appears equally available to older women and men, and is provided chiefly by resident daughters, sons and spouses, and by non-resident daughters, sisters and sons. Extensive elderly caregiving requirements may impose a growing, double burden on many, who are also providing care for dependent children. Without further support, current and future requirements may significantly limit the options of caregiving women and men.

Indian thought conceives of life in four normative stages: of student, householder, forest-dweller and renouncer. A metaphysical theory related to the conception of life-stages is that of the ends or purposes of life: appropriate conduct, material well-being, physical satisfaction and liberation. The theory of the ends of life is reconstructed here in the light of contemporary philosophical discussions about the meaning of life. The first three ends are part of a world-oriented attitude; the last end, of world-transcending contemplation. Among age-neutral and age-specific ways of relating life stages and life ends, that of taking old age as the time for the renunciatory stage is important and is examined in the context of the two main theories of meaning: world-oriented and world-transcending. Old age is secondary to earlier stages in a world-oriented theory, more significant in the world-transcendent one. However, both theories, seen independently, are paradoxical. In a synthesis, the world-transcendence of renunciation in old age is paramount in Indian thought, but worldly action is significant because renunciation depends on the richness of the life renounced. This reconstruction of an ancient ideal is offered as a philosophical paradigm for transculturally relevant attitudes to life in old age.

Full blood counts, serum ferritin, vitamin B12 and folate, erythrocyte folate concentrations and nutrient intakes were estimated in twenty-three Indian vegetarian, twenty-two Caucasian omnivores and eighteen Caucasian vegetarian women aged 25–40 years. Energy and copper intakes were lower in the Indian women than in the Caucasians. Intakes of dietary fibre, vitamin C and folate were greater and the proportion of energy derived from fat was lower in the vegetarians than in the omnivores. Vitamin B12 and protein intakes were lower in both vegetarian groups than in the omnivores. Fe intake was similar in all the groups but haem Fe provided one-quarter of the Fe intake of the omnivores. Haemoglobin concentrations were generally inside the normal range in all groups, but were lower in the Indians as were mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and mean corpuscular haemoglobin (MCH). Higher MCV, MCH and lower erythrocyte (RBC) counts were observed in Caucasian vegetarians compared with the Caucasian omnivores. In both groups of vegetarians, concentrations of serum vitamin B12 and ferritin were markedly lower than in the omnivores. RBC folate concentrations were lower in the Indians than in either of the Caucasian groups when subjects taking supplements were excluded. It is concluded that vegetarians need to ensure they have adequate intakes of Fe and vitamin B12.