Healthcare racism investigation must go beyond ‘bad apples,’ Indigenous doctor says – Prince George Citizen
June 25, 2020
Dr. Terri Aldred doesn’t recall her time in medical school altogether fondly.
“I grew up in a very remote place. I was very poor. I’m indigenous and I’m a woman,” said the member of Tl’Azt’En Nation who practices primary care medicine in Indigenous communities in northern B.C. “I didn’t have an easy go of it.”
Particularly demoralizing was the so-called ‘soft racism’ or microaggressions. “It was kind of from all angles, in a lot of ways.”
One incident that sticks occurred when she was 24, while pulling an evening shift at a busy hospital emergency room in Edmonton. “The emerg doc said, ‘Oh, you should go help your drunk relative in Bay whatever,’” said Aldred. “So I did. And, you know, they had been drinking but they were not even drunk. Not that it matters.”
