My name is James Makokis, I'm from the satellite green nation in northeastern Alberta and I'm
one of the co-authors on this book chapter with my mother Patricia Makokis. The first thing I think
when it comes to our health that's critical in that process based on our story is having indigenous
people working in the hospitals who understand that there are different ways of being. There are
different belief systems or different health practices and having medical doctors having
specialists who are open to listening to those needs and more importantly ensuring that they do
everything they can to honor the fact that there are different ways of different requests that
people have and I have to say that the physician, the gynecologist I had, I knew what I wanted and
I went in and I spoke to her and she was very supportive. She told me to put my wishes into
a letter and then that letter was taken to the liaison person in the hospital and I met with
that person. She in turn moved it to the unit that I would be staying so when I went into the hospital
they already knew what my wishes were. I think it's important to understand in the health field
and health professions whether that's medicine, nursing, pharmacy that there was an indigenous
health system here prior to contact and so when we talk about indigenous medicines and indigenous
ceremonies those form the foundation of our health system. So the original medicines to this
continent on Turtle Island are indigenous medicines. They're not alternative medicines and so
when we frame things from that perspective then western medicine is actually alternative medicine
and for health practitioners and the health system to know that is important
and so what forms the foundation of our health are these two things together which are our
ceremonies and we had a ceremony called the Medeo Comique or the Medewin Lodge and that forms
the foundation of our training of medicines for people and knowledge exchange as well as our
other ceremonies that form the foundation of our health or myopamotsuin as our chapter is called.
So that needs to be understood and so for medical students what helped me through medical school
is having the support and prayers from our elders in the community who would continuously do ceremonies
for my sister and I to get through medical school which unfortunately for many indigenous
learners can be very racist and a very unsafe space for us to practice and learn when we should be
learning about anatomy and physiology and all the other things that we need to be good doctors.
Sometimes a lot of the times we do experience racism or even physical harassment
and so in terms of what will help students through that is having a strong sense of
understanding of themselves which sometimes they do discover in medicine because they need to.
They need that foundation of their identity and their spirituality and their community
to support them through that process and so medical students in general should be learning
about the indigenous health experience in Canada within the health care system
which has foundations in experimentation on indigenous people, trialing vaccines,
for sterilization, all of these things which form the resistance that indigenous people have to
going in for health and healing into the health system and to counter that would be
learning about our medicines and ceremonies from elders and medicine people who can teach them
to really help in the healing of our people because it's with our own medicines and systems
that our people would live long healthy lives and with Western medicine I view it as
helping to address the sicknesses of social illnesses and dysfunction.
What Western medicine can learn is that we are gifts of creation, we are loaned our bodies
and as such we have to respect that and respect ourselves and our body and not to take that for
granted you know every day that we get to wake up is a gift, every day we get to put our feet down
on the floor is a gift and it's when you don't have those things that I think people all of a
sudden realize what they've lost when we should be honoring and recognizing what we have, the gift
of life, the gift of a body, sound mind and I think that that's one of the things, the most
important things is how we see our bodies and in many other things as well.
Trauma and grief can become so overwhelming in the community and that our ceremonies were
prevention mechanisms to dealing with those things when they happened and that when we practice them
that it helps people to to deal with their trauma grief loss and all of those things which can be
very difficult for people to cope with and we have to remember that in our teachings that
death is just another phase of our experience here and that will continue on in this spirit world
and that we do different things in ceremony to help people with that grieving process as well
and it's by participating in bringing those back and helping our people to understand what those are
that we can start dealing with this overwhelming sense of despair which happens in the community
sometimes around grief and loss and trauma and those sorts of things.
