Origin: a concept credited to Maouri nurses originating
from explorations within healthcare environments
within Indigenous communities in New Zealand
(Bin-Sallik, 2003). A situation-dependent feeling of emotional comfort and calm, spawned from believing
and trusting a person or persons with whom one is in a
relationship, that expressed invitations to be vulnerable
interpersonally, are authentic and genuine. These feelings
of emotional comfort and calm come without fear
of being assaulted, attacked, challenged, demeaned,
diminished, disempowered, judged, or otherwise questioned
relative to one’s identity (Brown et al., 2009).
Cultural safety evokes feelings of ease, wellbeing,
solace, and encouragement to explore dimensions of
interpersonal relationships, including the myriad current
and historical contexts by which they are defined, that
heretofore might have been approached cautiously, if
not avoided altogether. Cultural safety arouses a sense
of self-respect and reverence for one’s identity.
Consequentially, this intrapersonal acceptance of oneself
stimulates a willingness to suspend personal biases,
assumptions, and suppositions toward others and an
openness to learning about and ultimately appreciating
the lived experiences of the person or persons with
whom they are now in a relationship Wilson (2014).
Cultural safety awakens within each relational participant
a faith that feeling culturally safe in other relationships
are real possibilities that can be actualized over
time. Simultaneously, cultural safety stirs up selfprotective
anticipation that not all relationships are
primed to exchange mutual recognition of the depth
and dignity required to maximize relationally safe
experiences. Cultural safety demands on-going selfreflection
and honed abilities to assess, evaluate, and
render impressions relative to the cultural safety of
situation-specific relational opportunities. The emergence
of cultural sport psychology (Schinke &
Hanrahan, 2009; Schinke, McGannon, & Smith, 2012),
an encouraging byproduct of sport and exercise psychology
expanding their work with diverse cultural ethnic
and racial communities, evidences the integration of
cultural safety as a functional component of sport and
exercise scholarship, practice, and consultation.
