Many health issues raised as CMA president visits First Nation community
December 14, 2009
Dr. Anne Doig will travel to many places during her one-year term as CMA president, but few trips are likely to prove as memorable as her Oct. 8 visit to the Shoal Lake 39 First Nation in northwestern Ontario.Doig, who received an invitation to travel to the community while on a meet-the-members visit with physicians and medical students in Kenora, Dryden and Sioux Lookout, was accompanied by Dr. Sherry Reed-Walkiewicz, president of the medical staff at Kenora’s Lake of the Woods Hospital.
The trip to Shoal Lake not only allowed her to discuss Aboriginal health issues with Band Chief Eli Mandamin and other community leaders but also to participate in the band’s annual Fall Feast.
“Your visit is a big thing for us,” community health representative Sarah Mandamin told Doig. “Cross-cultural exchanges are important.”
Shoal Lake 39 – also known as Iskatewizaagegan – has 600 registered members, and about 400 of them live in this community, which is 50 km west of Kenora.
Doig said the clearest messages she received during her visit concerned band leaders’ back-to-nature philosophy and their wariness of conventional health care.
Chief Mandamin acknowledged that it is difficult to spread a back-to-nature message because of competition from the “square tubes” – television sets and computer screens – that are causing First Nations’ young people to lose traditional skills in areas such as hunting and fishing.
“The bottom line is that our people have always lived in [seasonal] cycles and we have to start living in cycles again – I think that is the healthy way,” he said during the meeting, held at the community health centre. “But it is hard to live in cycles when TVs are on 24 hours a day.”
Chief Mandamin thinks a resurgence of interest in traditional Aboriginal healing is a positive sign. “As an elder said when she was dying, ‘The old ways are going to become the new ways again,’ ” he told Doig.
Asked about the community’s relationship with modern health care, he said that “trust is a problem.” At Shoal Lake, on-site care is provided by a nurse practitioner, while patients with more serious problems are sent to physicians in Kenora.
During the meeting, Doig noted that Aboriginal health issues are a high priority at the CMA, which in August passed a resolution to work with national Aboriginal organizations and governments to set specific goals for Aboriginal and First Nations’ health over a generation.
Sarah Mandamin is one of the community’s vital voices when it comes to health issues. When she was honoured in September as a role model in the fight against cancer, the citation stated: “When her husband passed away from cancer, she chose to speak out to her community about the disease and how to help prevent it. Getting adults to have an annual check-up is one of the biggest challenges Sarah sees in her community. When working with patients, she shares her own experience to show the importance of early detection of cancer. She also tells people not to be intimidated by health care providers and to come to appointments with written questions to help them remember what to ask.”
Doig’s meeting with band leaders took place following the Fall Feast, which is held annually to acknowledge nature’s bounty.
This year’s menu included deer stew, bannock, fish and berries, but Doig said her meeting with band leaders also provided “plenty of food for thought.”
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By Patrick Sullivan
