Kinistin First Nation

I started working as a Community Health Nurse in 1977. One of the first reserves where I worked was called Kinistino. They later changed their name back to the original Kinistin. Indigenous people have steadily been changing their names over the years, and can be difficult to keep up! When I first started working, people were called Indian or Métis, then that was changed to Aboriginal, and now it is Indigenous. Maybe it will change again, I don’t know. And many reserves and territories have changed back to their original name in their language. Métis were called ‘half-breeds’ for many years, but changed in the early 70s and has remained the same over the years. Some people, more in Alberta and elsewhere, have called themselves ‘natives’, but I never really liked that word. Native reminds me of some plant or animal that is ‘native’ to an area. And we are not plants or animals, but actual people.

Kinistin is a small Saulteaux (plains Ojibway/Anishnaabe) community south of Tisdale. When I worked there, they had about 150 members. My CHR was Frances Thomas. When I first started, her dad, Tony Thomas, was chief. The reserve was poor, but not as poor as Yellowquill. Due to the smaller numbers, I would only go to Kinistin once a week. It was about a one-hour drive from the office. (There is also a town called Kinistino, about 60 minutes west of the reserve.) The people used to get their mail at a little post office nearby called Chagoness.

There was a small 2-room clinic on the reserve. It had a propane heater in the waiting room, that I had to start if I was using the clinic. As I pressed the button to light the pilot light, I always had visions of the whole place blowing up! We didn’t use the clinic much, as every time we would open the door, there would be a carpet of flies on the floor! Where did the flies come from? I have no idea. So, we would have to sweep the floor and light the stove to get the place ready for business. I always felt like the place was dirty due to the flies, so I didn’t like using it much. Plus, a lot of people didn’t have cars, so they would have to walk to the clinic.

Instead, I would go house to house. My immunization rates were near 100%. I immunized kids on the kitchen table, on the step, in my government vehicle, wherever there was a flat surface and a place to sit the kid. In the early days, the immunization shot to babies was subcutaneous in the upper arm, and I got pretty good at it. I could usually give it without the kid even crying. This has changed and now most immunization is given intramuscular into the thigh or upper arm. I think it hurts more now. And I think they give more than one needle now too.

Frances was a big help, as many people still spoke their language – Saulteaux. She was able to translate for me. From my training, I had learned a lot of medical terms and a whole new language. One of my first lessons on the job, was to talk plainly and clearly. No medical mumbo-jumbo. Not that I spoke down to people, but I just kept my language simple. It was easier for her to translate. If someone had been to the doctor and given a diagnosis, I knew what the diagnosis was and explain it to them.

Health care has some work to do. For truly informed consent, people need to really understand what is being done to them. Often, procedures and diagnoses are explained using medical terms, and people don’t really understand them. However, they have some faith in the health professional, so they give them permission to do whatever! This is not right. There continues to be gaps in Health Care, and Indigenous people are not always treated appropriately.

Nearly every reserve that I worked had someone that had a leg amputated. There was a fellow at Kinistin, sorry, I forgot his name. I would try to visit the people with chronic illness once a month or so. He did not have a fridge, so I was always worried about his insulin. He would store it in a cupboard in his house. He would occasionally complain about his stump, and he would be willing to show it to me. He did have a prosthetic leg which he wore most of the time.

Diabetes is a huge issue within the Indigenous community. I eventually did my Master’s research on diabetes. In the late 90s, 50% of First Nations women between 45 and 65 years old would have Type II diabetes. I don’t know what the rates are today – likely worse. It was difficult to do the diabetes education needed, and I also knew that people had received little instruction at diagnosis. They related diabetes to ‘sugar’, there was many sayings like, ‘I have sugar by-jesus’ instead of sugar diabetes. Lots of humour in Indigenous communities. So, when I would ask people about their diet, they would carefully explain that they had reduced their sugar.

There was only one telephone at Kinistin, and it was in the Chief’s house. And it was not in the porch or kitchen where you walked in, but in the middle of the wall in the living room! It was a pay phone. So, if someone needed to call, they had to have change or call someone willing to accept a collect call. I don’t think they had a band office. If they did, we didn’t spend any time there.

Every summer, the whole community would pack up and go to southern Alberta to pick sugar beets. I think they used their school buses, and loaded up everyone that wanted to go. As a result, the number of people left behind on the reserve was pretty small. I didn’t have much work in the summer. I don’t know how long the community had been going south, but it seemed to be a custom. The people in Kinistin still lived very traditionally, hunting, trapping and gathering. One time, Frances and I drove up to a house and there was a white blob of stuff outside on a barrel. I asked Frances what it was, and she said it was a skinned beaver. The white was the fat that surrounded the beaver, under it’s hide. One time, when I drove onto the reserve, there were two old people, Mr. and Mrs. Smokeyday, with black garbage bags on the side of the road. I stopped to talk to them, and they had been collecting ‘seneca root’. They were drying it out, before putting it into the bags. It was a collection of whitish roots. I asked where they found it, and they pointed with their lips behind them. A good gatherer NEVER gives up their source!! I’m not sure what they did with their roots. Some would sell them to pharmaceutical companies, where they would be ground up and be the base for certain kinds of medicine.

I recall a phone call from the school in Pleasantdale. There was a little town called Pleasantdale where the kids from Kinistin went to school. I’m not sure if it was a teacher or the principal, but they wanted me to supply them with Kwellada shampoo for their showers after gym. Kwellada shampoo is used to combat head lice and is quite toxic. I refused. Stereotypes have been in place for years with Indigenous people, that they are dirty, that they have head lice. I don’t think anyone had running water at Kinistin, so they likely weren’t as clean as their non-Indigenous classmates. I grew up without running water, and I never had head lice until much later in life.

I also recall Kinistin loading up the school buses, and taking all their kids to the optometrist. Over 75% of the kids at Kinistin wore glasses! I told Frances that this was wrong. In our family of 7, only my dad and I wore glasses. A much smaller number. I always suspected that the optometrist was making some bucks from them! And once people started wearing glasses, they needed them from that point on.

Frances was a good CHR. Early in our relationship, she ended up with Bell’s palsy. Bell’s palsy is when half of the face becomes paralyzed. In some Indigenous communities, it is thought that this is bad medicine, and that it turns the mouth sideways on the face. Bad medicine in this way, is like voodoo. Someone doesn’t like you and will send you some bad luck. There really is no treatment, and the Bell’s palsy eventually receded. I don’t know if doctors know why it happens. When I asked Frances about it, she said that the old ladies had made her some medicine, and she did recover pretty quickly. One of her eyes and her lip were a bit out of place at the end.

Frances invited me to her wedding. I went, totally not sure what to expect. It was a beautiful day, and she had a nice event. She married Albert Scott. I think he was Chief at the reserve later. I also worked for him when I worked at FSIN. He was the Vice-Chief of Health and Social Development. He was a good boss. It’s funny how the circle comes around – you meet people early on, and then connect with them again years later.

I’m not sure what year it was, but Albert and Frances won the lottery. They won $1M or more. I was happy for them. I like it when the lottery is won by poor people. It will make a big difference in their life. Word spreads fast in Indigenous communities, and I heard about it shortly after it happened. I’m not sure what they did with their money, but I’m sure they shared it around. That’s the thing about our communities; whatever we have, we share with others, our families and other community members.

I would get teased in later years from people from Yellowquill and Kinistin. They would complain that I just used them as a ‘stepping stone’, to learn and then move on. I guess to some degree it’s true! I sure did learn a lot in my first four years. Last year, I re-connected with a lady from Kinistin that I hadn’t seen in years (we both were at Marquis Downs in Saskatoon watching horse racing). She was telling me about her adult son who had passed away. It was a very sad story and both of us were standing together crying. My adult daughters were with me, and they seen us crying, and they sat down to wait, knowing that it might be a while. Some of these people had a piece of my heart!

And Maarsii/Meegwich – thank you (Michif, my Métis language), thank you (Saulteaux) to all those people that allowed me into their homes and their communities, as I learned my practice. It set me on a good path for the rest of my life.