Six Nations health conference

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A health conference is taking place Friday and Saturday at Six Nations Community Hall to discuss indigenous health issues. The community says there is a growing need to address the unique heath care requirements of Aboriginal people.

The Ontario government pledged 75 thousand dollars towards creating a plan to implement the recommendations made over this two day health conference. Indigenous health issues were pushed into the spot light when 11 year old Makayla Sault’s parents chose to stop her chemotherapy and turn to traditional medicine. Then there was the case of JJ another 11 year old aboriginal girl with leukemia. A judge ruled she has the right to pursue traditional medicine over chemotherapy.

Mary Ellen Simon is the mother of 15 year old Elija . He has been living with an inoperable brain tumor since he was 10 years old. He’s spent a lot of time at McMasters Children’s Hospital in Hamilton including 7 weeks of chemotherapy. But Mary Ellen says the health care system needs to be more inclusive of traditional medicine. “They don’t have the knowledge and they are not willing to say yes to traditional medicine there is just so many unknowns so the battle ended before it could even start.”

In order to move forward together – which happens to be the name of this conference – there is one key topic that’s being discussed. That is education.

Doctor Karen Hill explains the importance of a good relationship between indigenous patients and doctors. “That is an equal one that sees indigenous people as whole people capable of making decisions complete with our own culture, our own ways of knowing, our own ways of being. And when you start with that relational point of view, then things are able to flow out of that.”