‘Not much has changed’: Indigenous physicians reflect on health care in Canada

The Canadian Press  26/09/2024 11:31 Dr. Michael Anderson clearly remembers a First Nations child flown into the Toronto pediatric ward where he was working 30 years ago. Standing in front of the nursing station, Anderson overheard a doctor he considered a mentor say the child’s parents will “be drunk for a week.” “‘We won’t see them. They’ll come and pick them up when it’s time for him to go home,’” Anderson, a surgical oncologist and palliative care physician in Toronto, recalls hearing. Anderson, who has Mohawk ancestry with family roots in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, says he learned to hide his Indigenous ties after that incident. “Because if they know that I’m First Nations, they’re going to be thinking about me exactly the same as they are about this family. And…

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