Making a difference: Dr. Darlene Kitty

A Cree family physician and chair of the CFPC’s Indigenous health committee, Dr. Darlene Kitty is the director of the MD Indigenous program at the University of Ottawa and also teaches at McGill. She is diligent in the recruitment, admission and support of Indigenous students becoming physicians, as well as teaching Indigenous health and social issues to physicians and medical learners. Q: What brought you to this kind of work? Both my parents are residential school survivors, so I’m an intergenerational survivor. That’s an important aspect of my work. The death of Joyce Echaquan last year really impacted me and inspired me to reaffirm my passion for teaching about Indigenous issues, and particularly about anti-racism. I work up in Chisasibi, my dad’s community, which is the largest of nine Cree communities in Northern Quebec. My daily clinical work really helps me keep grounded to ensure that I have a good foundation of advocacy and teaching. Q: What would you say to young doctors about how to better serve Indigenous communities? The journey starts with knowledge. And it’s not just about going to lectures. You have to experience life either in an Indigenous community, or have some exposure to their lives—perhaps through a clinical rotation, perhaps just a visit to see what it’s really like, a talk with the community members. Talk with the elders, talk with the healthcare professionals who work there, because that’s how you will get a sense of what their lives are really like, what health problems they have, how the past ties in. Q: How do you and your colleagues stay positive when teaching about a grim history? With my Indigenous colleagues across Canada, most of us are teaching at the medical schools and it gets heavy . . . it does get heavy. So we’re trying to support each other, to encourage wellness. We do this through annual Indigenous physicians’ conferences, Zoom meetings. We talk to each other. Also, with the discovery of the unmarked graves, it’s becoming even heavier, so there’s more need to support each other. (At the same time), there’s been a real momentum since last year and a lot of buy-in from medical organizations addressing this, which is great, raising awareness for equity, diversity and inclusion. There’s a lot of collaboration and complementary work being done across Canada. Q: What are you passionate about? Every Indigenous person is touched somehow by the residential school experience, the Sixties Scoop. And even since then, there have been a lot of racist incidents that still impact people. So our medical workforce has to become more sensitive to this, and not make judgments about patients. If someone’s down and out on the streets on Vancouver’s East Side, or Regina, or Montreal, there’s something behind that person’s situation. They might be drunk or addicted to something and living on the streets, but what’s behind all that? We have to try to understand beyond what you just see. And that calls for compassion and advocacy. We also need to learn about and celebrate First Nations, Inuit and Métis cultures, resiliency and their contribution to Canadian society. Q: What can physicians do? We need family physicians and specialists to become knowledgeable about Indigenous health and social issues, and also be able to understand what culturally safe care is and give it. It’s very much a challenge, especially in rural and remote areas where there aren’t many health professionals, but we need family physicians to help to improve the health and outcomes of Indigenous people. Read: Making a difference: 10 physicians working to improve healthcare for racialized communities

Making a difference: Dr. Darlene Kitty

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