Looking ahead with the Indigenous Health Movement

IHM co-chairs outline their plans to make discussion around Indigenous health more accessible and engaging

Three years ago, for our first Education and Reconciliation issue, The Silhouette spoke with the then co-chairs of the Indigenous Health Movement, Jayden Rivers and Alexa Vrzovski, about the student-lead group, its operations and its goals.

For this year’s return of this important issue, we spoke with current co-chairs Darci Debessige and Georgia Campbell about their goals for the group and where they hope to take it this year. Debassige is of Ojibwe ancestry and Campbell is Metis.

The Indigenous Health Movement was initiated in 2016 by students Yotakahron Jonathan, Yipeng Ge, Alex Liu, Sharon Yeung and Deepti Shanbhag as a group project. It was launched with the goal of harboring discussion and raising awareness about the systemic issues Indigenous folks face in the context of health and healthcare.

Due to this lands history of colonialism and the attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and people, Indigenous folks have poorer health outcomes for many conditions, are relatively lacking in access to health services and face racism within today’s health care system.

“There are vast differences in the health outcomes of indigenous people in Canada, but also across the world. There are vast differences in the healthcare that they receive, and the way that they are treated by healthcare practitioners,” said Debassige.

Since its inception, the main event the Indigenous Health Movement has held is the Indigenous Health Conference. The group has since expanded and diversified its endeavors to engage people and raise awareness about Indigenous health. “We’ve run learning circles where you can have facilitators come in and run cultural programming. We had a birch bark basket making event last year, and we’ve had a speaker series, which are like smaller forms of a conference,” said Debassige.

Debassige and Campbell explained that the smaller events like their speaker series as well as some of their new ideas for this coming year are all aimed at engaging more students by making the movement more accessible and approachable. Because the movement aims to educate and raise awareness about Indigenous health to as many as they can, the group and its events are open to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

One of their bigger projects this year that students should look out for is their new podcast called The Circle, which hopes to be a medium for discussion and awareness-raising just like the conference and speaker series. Debassige revealed that Campbell had initially proposed the idea in her application to join the Indigenous Health Movement.

"At the end of all of our applications for the executive team is “what is an idea that you have? What would you like to see happen?” Because people who have good ideas make good team members. And so at the end of this one application, it’s like, I just think that a podcast would be really cool … and I was like, “that’s a good idea,”” said Debassige. “A podcast I think is a good way to deliver information because it’s so accessible,” said Campbell.

The group has over the summer recorded their first pilot episode of the podcast, and is hoping to release it in the coming weeks as they figure out the logistics of publishing it. For their first few episodes, they hope to speak with both current about and past Indigenous students, both about Indigenous health and their experiences and journeys.

Whether you are an Indigenous or non-Indigenous student or member of the campus community, the Indigenous Health Movement welcomes all to become involved in their events and partake in their opportunities to educate the community about Indigenous health and reconciliation.