SASKATOON -- Indigenous elders say it’s integral to prioritize traditional knowledge keepers during Canada’s vaccine rollout because they’re carrying centuries of oral traditions and their example can help encourage others to get vaccinated.
Kathy Bird from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba has been a registered nurse for nearly four decades and while she’s officially retired, still does work with traditional medicine practitioners at the Peguis Health Services in Manitoba. She said the pandemic has put centuries of their cultural wisdom at risk.
“It’s very important that all of our knowledge keepers be offered the vaccination because if we don’t preserve the traditional knowledge, it can be lost forever,” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview on Monday.
Bird, herself a knowledge keeper, explained how elders are living, breathing repositories of centuries-old ceremonies, medicine and songs, which traditionally are not written down. She stressed how prioritizing them in the national vaccine rollout is helping Indigenous communities “do everything we can to help them to survive as long as they can.”
Perry McLeod-Shabogesic, an Indigenous knowledge keeper from Nipissing First Nation in northern Ontario and manager of cultural services for Niijaansinaanik Child and Family Services, agrees.
“You don’t want to necessarily compare people as to who’s ‘more valuable’ but certainly speaking from protecting our history and our knowledge, our teachings, it’s important to acknowledge our knowledge keepers as some kind of priority,” he said in a phone interview, noting a lot of knowledge keepers are elderly and more vulnerable to COVID-19.
The pandemic has spurred on Bird and other traditional Indigenous healers to offer their support to First Nations communities across Canada. She’s personally helped hundreds of people on and off the reserves nation-wde with spiritual support during their struggle with COVID-19, and while they’re in recovery.
For Bird, this also includes making medicine bags -- filled with herbal medicine and tonics -- and hanging them on peoples’ doorknobs -- to prevent the potential spread of the disease.
ELDERS' WORDS CARRY WEIGHT
Because Bird runs wellness clinics, including some at Manitoba's largest hospital two days a month, she’s one of the most well-known figures in her community.
Having received both doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, the importance of knowledge keepers getting vaccinated is not lost on her - it helps build trust in the vaccine for communities who have a long history of being neglected and forgotten.
Michael David Blacksmith, sun dance leader from the Pimicikamak Cree Nation in Manitoba, who leads traditional ceremonies, said he took the vaccine “to let people know that it is safe [and] it will protect you.”
“We support the vaccine and we are telling our clientele, our people to take the vaccine saying ‘watch us, we’re going to take it ourselves,’” he said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca, acknowledging leaders and elders like him have a lot of community influence. “I’ve convinced a lot of people to take it.”
McLeod-Shabogesicas, who’s awaiting his second dose of the Moderna vaccine, explained elders only grow in importance and esteem for Indigenous people as time goes on. “When you retire, in the Indigenous community, that’s when a lot of the work starts, a lot of people lean on you for your knowledge, for your experience and your thoughts on issues.”
Perry McLeod-Shabogesic, an Indigenous knowledge keeper from Nipissing First Nation in northern Ontario said 'it’s important to acknowledge our knowledge keepers as some kind of priority.'
“I think the knowledge keepers who step forward to do that and do it in a public way, it is an important message because if anybody is going to have a suspicion it’s going to be the ones who lived through that time,” said McLeod-Shabogesicas, said referring to decades of historical injustices the Canadian government and medical practitioners have committed against Indigenous peoples.
Although reluctant to refer to himself as such, McLeod-Shabogesicas said many elders want to lead by example to spur more community vaccinations - but that this doesn’t negate inequalities Indigenous people face in Canada.
'A LOT OF HURT' HISTORICALLY
The COVID-19 pandemic has put a harsh spotlight on Indigenous communities across Canada, especially as the virus disproportionately affects them.
The systemic health, racial and social inequalities Indigenous communities face have only been magnified during the pandemic, with Indigenous people reporting a higher prevalence of arthritis, diabetes, obesity and asthma, all considered comorbidities with COVID-19, placing them at high risk.
There are 58 communities living under a boil water advisory across the country, and many living on reserve do not have access to consistent health care, adequate housing or dependable social services.
“We look at our history and there’s been a lot of hurt that’s been inflicted on our people… that may put us on guard and make us suspicious,” Bird said. It’s because of all this she said she’s been fielding a lot of phone calls from people in her community asking for her advice as to whether or not to take the vaccine.
But Bird said, “in spite of everything that’s happened, we still have to move forward.”
Kathy Bird from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba, centre, with fellow knowledge keepers Dr. Edna Manitowabi on her left and Laura Horton on her right.
Last month, her province of Manitoba was one of the first to prioritize traditional healers and knowledge keepers, but Bird noted how many Indigenous leaders criticize Ontario and Alberta in terms of getting vaccines to First Nations communities efficiently.
“Other people that I work with across Canada say some of the areas have been really slow,” she said. “Many knowledge keepers in Ontario were keeping in touch with and wondering when it was going to be in their community.”
Bird said safeguarding elders through prioritization in the vaccine rollout is one of the ways Indigenous communities can retain knowledge which government programs - such as residential schools - “tried to flush out of us.”
For more than a decade, McLeod-Shabogesica has been working with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, teaching Indigenous cultural practices during outreach and care.
He explained that this feeling of reclamation that Bird referenced is seen in Indigenous nurses and doctors who help instill community trust “because we have our own people coming in with the needles and the things that are needed.”
McLeod-Shabogesicas said leaning on Indigenous communities’ history of considering the greater good overall makes it easier when drilling down on practices such as getting vaccinated and wearing masks.
“The underlying message is the importance of the collective, doing things because it’s good for the community.”
With files from CTVNews.ca’s Christy Somos
