A Modern-Day
Medicine Woman U of T Med student Celina Nahanni plans to embed reconciliation into her practice By sasha chabot-gaspÉ
elina Nahanni, a proud Dene woman, is in her third year of medical school at the University of Toronto after earning her PhD in neuroscience from Queen’s University. A fierce advocate for Indigenous rights and reconciliation, Celina has a deep and abiding interest in health as a result of losing her mother, Phoebe, a residential school Survivor, to breast cancer when Celina was just 18. One of her ultimate goals is to make healthcare more accessible to Indigenous patients.“There’s been a long legacy of paternalism,” she says. “And this has been, on the whole, to the detriment of both the doctor and the patient. Granted, it’s changing, but it is rooted in this paternalistic attitude that doctors know best and patients must blindly accept what the doctor is saying – that doctors act in the patient’s best interest every time. I think the paternalistic legacy is what has often led to people having this distrust of the medical system. It’s also damaging to doctors. It puts too much stress on them because it sets unrealistic expectations.” To combat the paternalism of traditional Western medicine, Celina intends to embed reconciliation into her medical practice. For her, reconciliation in medicine starts with consensus-based leadership. She particularly likes having round-table discussions with people and making sure everyone feels heard, believing that if people were to be engaged in conversations and invited to be a partner in their own health process, this would make them less wary and would lead to more engagement. Celina’s inclusive style also means embracing alternative health practices and traditional ceremony instead of seeing them at odds with Western medicine. “You actually need both,” she says. “You need doctors to keep you in a state of health when you’re sick,
especially if your illness is life-threatening. But, you need more holistic healthcare providers to make you as well as possible. If you’re healthy and you want to have optimal health, you might consult a traditional healer or naturopath – but if you have a disease, then you also need a doctor.They are two different roles, and we need to learn to make those two elements respect each other and work together rather than antagonizing each other.” econciliation can’t just happen on a grand scale; Celina understands that it’s in the details, and weaves reconciliation into every aspect of her daily life, especially at school. She enjoys positively influencing her peers to be more aware of their implicit biases towards Indigenous people, and regularly pushes her fellow medical students to see the world through an Indigenous lens by challenging their assumptions in classroom discussions. This school year, she and four other students co-ran the Indigenous Health elective and brought Indigenous voices directly to students in a 10-week speaker series. econciliation also means building inroads in her field for the next generation, Celina believes. As the co-director of outreach for the Ontario-wide Altitude mentoring program, she regularly interacts with Indigenous high school students who are considering a career in healthcare. She has also worked with Canadian oots Exchange to build relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth. Celina strives to be a leader and a role model who can give Indigenous youth the encouragement they need to reach their potential. Her advice? “Find a mentor. Ask questions if you need to, get help where you can. The resources are out there. And call me. I can help out if you want; I’ll read over your application,” she says, laughing. She quickly turns serious again. “Just do it. Just go for it.”
6 Fall/winter 2016
Photography: Ethan horst mitchell
“Reconciliation in medicine starts with consensus-based leadership – Indigenous people should be partners in their own health process.”