Anishinaabe pharmacy building self-confidence, knowledge, health, and healing – Anishinabek News
April 3, 2023
M’CHIGEENG FIRST NATION – Sometimes, Neda Debassige Toeg forgets she’s at work.
Debassige Toeg, owner of Sweetgrass Pharmacy and Compounding in M’Chigeeng on Manitoulin Island, considers it home.
Her staff, clients and patients feel like family.
Sweetgrass Pharmacy and Compounding is unique. It is the first Indigenous-owned and operated pharmacy on a reserve in Canadian history, a labour of love for Debassige Toeg.
She is also the founder and president of the Aboriginal Pharmacists Association of Canada, and was the first Indigenous pharmacist “North of 60.”
“The whole thing is so cool,” Debassige Toeg, an Ojibwe from M’Chigeeng and a registered pharmacist for almost two decades, says. “All my mentors told me this would be impossible as a business. Independent pharmacies are a thing of the past.”
