Healing the Gut in an Inflamed World: A Decolonial, Anti-Oppressive Approach

But what if this isn’t a self-love problem? What if it’s a community love problem?

Before societies were organized around individual survival, many cultures lived through systems of reciprocity and relational care. In Indigenous and precolonial contexts, cooking and eating were communal acts. You nourished others—and in return, you were nourished.

Today, many people find it easier to cook for others than for themselves. We are wired for community and reciprocity. Nourishment was never meant to be a solitary task.

When we begin to see gut health through this wider lens, new possibilities emerge. Healing is no longer confined to supplements and nutrition protocols—though these still matter. It also includes rebuilding relationships: to community, to land, to systems that support collective wellbeing. This also means supporting Indigenous-led cultural revitalization movements. Traditional and Indigenous systems offer models rooted in balance, reciprocity, and interconnectedness. They remind us that health is not something we achieve alone, but something that emerges when the systems around us are also in right relation.

The authors of Infamed note the importance of supporting Indigenous-led movements to bring our unjust societal systems back into lived balance:

“Indigenous knowledge systems and the people for whom this understanding is not about theoretical possibilities but part of their lived truths can show us how it’s done - once they’re protected and uplifted as the leaders in this movement, and once we understand that our one place in this work is to follow their lead.” - Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the anatomy of Injustice. p. 328

This is where gut healing meets decolonization. To truly heal our guts, we must also begin to heal the conditions that inflame them. Colonization and the societal systems designed by Western Eurocentrism are inflaming our guts. A decolonial and anit-oppressive approach to healing includes a prescription that tends to the ‘inside’ as well as the ‘outside’, and to the individual as well as the relational. From this place, healing becomes possible—not just for our guts, but for the worlds they are shaped by.

The Program: Healing Your Gut in an Inflamed World:
A Decolonial, Anti-Oppressive Approach

This 3-Month Gut-Healing Program by Dr. Laura Batson, ND, combines naturopathic medicine, community-based ritual gatherings, online teachings, and activism to support Indigenous-led decolonization and Indigenization movements.

It has been designed to address all three interconnected levels of healing.

• The inside — personalized naturopathic gut healing protocol
• The relational — community and land-based ritual and collective care
• The outside — decolonizing and re-indigenizing the systems that shape our health.

For more information on this program, please join Laura Batson’s upcoming FREE webinar, visit the Healing the Gut in Inflamed Program registration page, or call The CHI reception at 613-792-1222.