Southern chiefs want voice in national health-care funding talks

Southern Manitoba First Nations leaders are calling out the erosion of the health system for Indigenous patients and are asking for a seat at the table when Canada’s premiers discuss health-care funding.

A week before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to meet with the premiers in Ottawa, five First Nations chiefs held a news conference Monday to bring attention to their concerns.

Every week, they hear about incidents in which their citizens are not given appropriate treatment, said Jerry Daniels, grand chief of the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, which represents 34 First Nations communities.

“We have grave concerns about the staffing shortages and the lack of inclusion of leadership in the discussions that are happening in Ottawa with the first ministers, and also here in Manitoba, as it relates to how we’re going to develop a strategy for health care. We have an impending crisis.”

Daniels had previously asked to be invited to the premiers’ meeting with the prime minister.

Daniels, along with Kinonjeoshtegon Chief Rod Travers, Pinaymootang Chief Kurvis Anderson, Lake Manitoba Chief Cornell McLean and Peguis Chief Glenn Hudson, shared examples of delays in medical transportation and hospital treatment for people from First Nations communities, racism, and the disproportionate impact on Indigenous peoples because of staff shortages and rural suspension of services.

“It’s the frustration of our people I’m expressing here. Things have to change, they really do,” Anderson said.

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A meeting with the Manitoba premier about health care is long overdue, and First Nations need to be directly involved in premiers’ discussions, Hudson said.

“It’s not just one hospital over another. It’s the entire system, and as First Nations people, we need to be treated fairly,” he said.

First Nations have never been meaningfully involved in health-care funding discussions or the current block-funding model, Daniels said. They’ve only seen an “erosion of First Nations health” and lower life expectancy for First Nations individuals, he said.

“The impact is huge and you’re still seeing it today. So when you’re talking about servicing health and creating better outcomes, you can’t do it without First Nations leading the charge on that.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Katie May
Reporter

Katie May is a general-assignment reporter for the Free Press.

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