Indigenous vaccination sites open; leaders get the jab

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This article was published 29/04/2021 (1373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kevin Chief gestured to a cluster of tents draped in orange tarps opposite the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre on Higgins Avenue.

The centre opened a vaccination clinic Thursday morning, and the former Point Douglas MLA was illustrating the importance of having the walk-in site for inoculation.

“These are some of the most vulnerable people that are living in our community. They’re our relatives. We see them,” he said. “The ability to go over and ask them to come over to get a vaccine. You know what that represents to me? That represents kindness, compassion.”

Nine people lined up and filled out consent forms on red clipboards. Some had appointments, others had come unannounced.

Chief was the first to get vaccinated.

“I was very proud to do it,” he said.

The centre offers a pragmatic solution to increasing access to vaccines for Point Douglas residents, he said. Indigenous people make up about 29 per cent of the neighbourhood’s population. Setting up in an established centre, where many people already visit for services, can encourage people to come, he said.

“It’s symbolic of trust,” said Chief. “People have to feel like they belong… not only when they walk through the door do they feel like they belong, but then they become ambassadors who provide encouragement to other Indigenous people.”

Community leaders such as himself must step up to inspire trust in vaccines, he said, “especially when there’s legitimate concerns because of such a difficult history. You need to use people that are trusted, that are known… to show people that you can trust this, that vaccines save lives.”

He was confident the centre would increase the rate of vaccination in the area.

“We’re not guessing on this. Thunderbird House became a very effective, efficient place to get people tested,” he said, with a faint smell of burning wood and cardboard in the air from a warming fire at Thunderbird House, which is down the street.

“We know that health and wellness, with some enhanced supports, there is a very unique opportunity with an Indigenous-led organization to provide the services.”

Another Indigenous-led site, Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre on McGregor Street, offered walk-in vaccinations on Thursday, too.

Provincial NDP Leader Wab Kinew got his needle at 9 a.m. after staff smudged the vials with sage.

“To me it was really nice to start that way because it’s treating the vaccine like a sacred medicine,” he said, “how we would in traditional Anishinaabe culture.”

He clarified: “It’s not sacred in the sense of a religious thing, just sacred in the sense of something important to our community.”

Kinew encouraged all those eligible to get their shot right away and to spread photos of themselves getting it on social media to combat vaccine hesitancy.

“You might have more weight with friends and family than an official like Dr. Roussin,” he said.

The province should tap into that concept by reaching out to influencers, athletes, entertainers and religious figures — anyone with influence in the community — to enlist them to spread pro-vaccine messages, he said.

Canada’s history of mistreating Indigenous people, including running medical experiments on them, may understandably foment mistrust in government-promoted vaccines, he noted.

“But the thing we have to recognize is now is different. I just went into an Indigenous-run facility where they had an Indigenous medical doctor and Indigenous elders, all collaborating together to give me and other members of the Indigenous community a chance to do our part to bring the pandemic to an end,” Kinew said.

He encouraged the Indigenous community to reach out to and place trust in Indigenous experts, such as Dr. Marcia Anderson, who inoculated Kinew and who has for years advocated to improve Indigenous health supports.

Vaccination campaigns, for Indigenous specifically or for the overall population, need to take an “all-of-the-above approach,” said Kinew.

“We should just be trying to get as many people vaccinated as possible, and that means supersites, local clinics, pop-ups — any way that we can get the vaccine out there, we should be taking advantage of those opportunities,” he said.

The Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre at 181 Higgins Ave. and Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata Centre at 363 McGregor St. are open to book appointments or for walk-ins. Residents and select workers over the age of 18 in both Point Douglas North and Point Douglas South are eligible to be vaccinated.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca