TORONTO -- Dr. Nadine Caron of Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation is a woman of firsts.
She was the first female First Nations student to graduate from the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine.
She then became the first female First Nations general surgeon in Canada, advocating for rural, northern and Indigenous populations in the country.
It is a responsibility she feels deeply.
“It’s about choice, it’s about equity, it’s about addressing the fact that it's time we're at the table,” Caron told CTV News. “The disparities are getting bigger…[but] more and more people in places of power and in positions where they can implement change are starting to actually own up to it.”
Caron has also been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is using her voice and profile to encourage those who are hesitant to get the vaccine.
That work on the front lines feeds into her mission to improve the Canadian health-care system for Indigenous people, who have long suffered from “racism” and “lack of respect,” Caron says.
As the founding First Nations Health Authority Chair in Cancer and Wellness, Caron is heading the “Silent Genomes Project” at the BC Children’s Hospital to further that goal.
The Silent Genomes Project helps diagnose diseases at an early age, and Caron is pushing for biobanks to be more diverse and representative, so that the research is too.
“As a parent your responsibility is to make the world a better place for your daughter, your son, your kids,” she said. Her own mother is a survivor of a residential school.
Caron said despite the traumatic legacy of residential schools, her mother remains “such an amazingly positive, intelligent, wise woman.”
Now as a professor in northern B.C., Caron is nurturing the next generation of doctors so that other Indigenous students can continue to break barriers.
