Sabrina Blanchard grew up on home-dried fish and moose meat, hearing her First Nations language, Tutchone, spoken at family gatherings and in her Yukon school, where it was taught.
Now, when Blanchard is at work, as a nurse in the neurological unit at Victoria General Hospital, and encounters a First Nations patient, there’s a little moment of recognition.
It’s not extra-sensory. It’s just a little acknowledgment of two people with some similar cultural histories and a mutual respect for shared experiences.
“It’s kind of cool, like we are all part of this club,” said Blanchard, laughing, in an interview.
She said she grew up a member of the Selkirk First Nation near Dawson City in a small town called Mayo. The town was not on a reserve, but its population was mostly First Nations, so “it’s got that rez feel.”
And three weeks ago, when she started work as a nurse, it marked a small milestone for Island Health. Blanchard became the 500th person who comes from a First Nations background to work for Island Health.
For four years, Island Health has been recruiting employees to make its workforce of about 18,500 employees representative of the Vancouver Island population it serves.
Steve Sxwithultxw, co-ordinator of the aboriginal employment program, said the number of First Nations people working for Island Health has more than doubled in the four years the program has been operating, from 199 at the outset.
Sxwithultxw, himself a member of the Penelakut community near Thetis Island, said apart from developing a workforce representative of the Vancouver Island, the move to hire more First Nations people just makes administrative sense for the health authority.
More people are retiring from the organization, leaving vacancies, he said.
“We need to make sure we get those jobs filled,” Sxwithultxw said.
“One of the things we’ve recognized is there is a lot of talent in our own backyard with the First Nations and aboriginal people living on Vancouver Island.”
But he emphasized the effort to hire First Nations people is not about quotas or keeping score. It’s about providing better health care for all Vancouver Island, including the people of its First Nations.
“Our standards are high and they need to be,” said Sxwithultxw. “You must have the training and you must have the education.”
“All our hires are based on merit,” he said. “It’s not just because you are an aboriginal person.”
Ian Knipe, Island Health’s director of Aboriginal Health, said it just makes sense that a doctor or nurse or any other health-care worker will more easily establish a meaningful relationship with a patient when they share a cultural background.
And so it goes for First Nations people encountering a First Nations person working in a health-care setting.
“We want to make it so aboriginal people will feel welcomed, respected and understood in their health-care system,” said Knipe.
He said Island Health, however, has found itself working against some terrible history: Residential schools, child welfare snatches, even horrible Indian hospitals, where aboriginal TB patients were quarantined in poor conditions, isolated from their families and communities, sometimes for years.
The unfortunate result for First Nations people living in the present is they often don’t show up in hospitals, clinics or doctors’ offices as quickly as health providers recommend. Their historic mistrust of official institutions, including hospitals, keeps them away.
“They don’t feel welcomed or they don’t feel respected,” Knipe said.
“So they hold off accessing care until their pain reaches the point where they really can’t stand it anymore,” he said. “It’s only then they go to a hospital or even just see a doctor.”
So one of the small steps Island Health has made in recent years is insisting new buildings are constructed with what are being called all nations healing rooms.
For example, in the new patient care tower at the Royal Jubilee Hospital is a space, built with advice from Vancouver Island First Nations elders. It features carvings from aboriginal artists and a picture created by a MĂ©tis artist.
It’s also a space where First Nations patients are welcome to complete special cultural practices, such as smudging, cleansing or singing.
“If a First Nations patient says they want to have a smudging ceremony as part of their healing, then we should be able to work with them and their family to actually bring that about,” Knipe said.
Meanwhile, Blanchard is just happy to be working as a nurse, in a specialized unit such as neuroscience, dealing with things such as brain and spine trauma.
She gives full credit to the Aboriginal Employment Program for encouraging her to apply and helping her with things such as her resumé.
But now she is a nurse first, hoping to assist all patients of all backgrounds.
Nevertheless, Blanchard said she understands and respects, some of the cultural nuances that come with a First Nations background.
For example — and she is careful to make it clear she doesn’t like “blanket statements” applied to any people — First Nations people can seem to take a little longer to get to a point.
For First Nations elders in particular, it can seem an affront to enter an official setting like a hospital and then face a busy health-care worker asking personal questions and demanding direct answers.
“But once trust is established, there can be a real meaningful back-and-forth relationship,” said Blanchard. “It can just take a little more listening to learn where they are coming from.”
“So for myself, I try to use a little humour, listening and I’m respectful,” she said.
If there is one cultural surprise she has encountered, it arises from living in British Columbia after growing up in the Yukon.
“I find not a lot of people here have a good understanding of native culture,” Blanchard said. “It’s a surprise how many people have no experience with native people or have never even met a native person.
“And they live here in ÎÚŃ»´«Ă˝,” she said. “It’s crazy.”
