Darrel Manitowabi takes on new role with Northern Ontario School of Medicine

The Northern Ontario School of Medicine is calling it a historic first.

The school has announced it's appointing Darrel Manitowabi as the NOSM-Associated Medical ServicesHannah Chair in the History of Indigenous Health and Indigenous Traditional Medicine.

Hannah Chairs prioritize the history of medicine in healthcare education to ensure that students have a greater understanding of our medical past. Manitowabi will be Ontario's sixth chair, finally filling a role that was established back in 2015.

Manitowabi is Three Fires (Odawa, Ojibwa, Potawatomi) Anishinaabe from the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory and currently resides in the Whitefish River First Nation. He recently served as the Director of Northern and Community Studies at Laurentian University. He was the director of Indigenous Affairs at NOSM in 2018 and the assistant dean of Graduate Studies in 2019.

"I will be moving into this new position and investing all of my time in it," Manitowabi said.

"I will be researching traditional Indigenous healing and health from ahistoric perspective and I will be understanding how the history of colonialism has impacted First nations and Indigenous perspectives of health, the practice of it and how it's relevant to health care today."

He begins his new job on July 1.

"The Northern Ontario School of Medicine is deeply honoured to have Dr. Darrel Manitowabi take on this valuable position," said Dr. Sarita Verma, NOSM Dean, President and CEO.

"We are taking another major step in addressing how colonialism has affected the health and wellbeing of First Nations communities by no longer avoiding the history of wondrous healing and medicines in our society. We have much to learn from that history and NOSM is committed to the Calls to Action made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada."

Manitowabi said he hopes to shed more light on the history of traditional healing.

"You know healing is holistic. We tend to be influenced heavily by a Western healing framework, where we think of medicine as a Western medical doctor and we think of medicine as being located in a pharmacy,"he said.

"So I'm going to be focused on a holistic understanding and holistic perspective and I'm not going to be limited to the actual plant medicinal perspectives of Indigenous healing."

He said his new role is intended to to inform the public andbiomedical healers about what traditional healing is all about.

"There's a lot of misconceptions, a lot of stereotypes. And so a significant component of this position will be education. So it'll be formal education right in the medical school, right within the medical school curriculum also at the graduate level, nationally and even internationally," Manitowabi said.

"So I'm looking toengage in networks and to really promote this idea that Indigenous peoples had ways of healing and ideas of healing. And it'smuch more thanwe initially think it is."

Manitowabi will begin his work within the catchment of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, where the focus will be on northern Ontario, "as a starting point."