Cree doctor tries to mesh two approaches to health
Dr. James Makokis, a family physician in Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, works to meld Cree medicine with Western practices. He shared his experience at the First Nations Health Summit in Saskatoon this week with reporter
Q When you were studying, were you already thinking about blending Cree and Western medicines?
A No. I had the opportunity as a family medicine resident to go and do a month of a traditional medicine elective and that gave me the opportunity to go back home and work with our own medicine people and elders, and that’s when I really started learning about our medicines .... It really transformed the way that I looked at the land. Instead of seeing weeds or just plants, it was all of these things that we can use to help ourselves. So even when you’re driving along the road you can see everything that was available to us and how much help we had at our disposal to improve our people that has been lost.
Q Can you describe the patient experience with this hybrid approach?
A With our treaty promise to health, it was our ancestors’ vision to have both medicines. And so when someone comes with a particular health problem, they are able to choose what it is that they want. However, they’re able to come to a place where both practitioners are able to work together to say, “This is as far as I can go within my training and practice and you might be able to help them,” or “How can we work together to help this patient?” I think when we work in isolation it marginalizes practices and as a result the patient doesn’t get the full benefit of both medicines.
Q What benefits do traditional medicine offer that Western medicine doesn’t?
A The biggest benefit is that indigenous people feel safer using our own medicines. There is a whole methodology of I would say health-care delivery with using our medicines that goes beyond just taking a pill, which is usually what happens in Western medicine. There’s a process of support for that individual and their family to get better and to address the underlying problem of their health issue. They feel more comfortable in using something that is a part of them, because in Cree beliefs we believe that we’re related to our medicine and that ties back to our creation teachings of how we came to be on this island. Sometimes they do need Western medicine to help address, I would call it colonial sicknesses that are related to stress or chronic disease or infectious diseases even. We do need that to some extent. But we need to create the space within the health system for indigenous medicines to return, and until we do that we’re just going to continue to have the statistics that are out there about the high rates of mortality and morbidity for indigenous people.
Q How difficult is this line of work?
A The difficulty is in working within the existing health system, which does not allow for that. It does not allow for alternative medicine practitioners to come in and work alongside Western trained physicians or allied health professionals. It marginalizes them. What we are trying to do is create a space which may be outside the conventional health system to be able to allow this to happen and come together, and nurture the relationship.