Dug Riffelo, Terry Bigsby and Michael Dan fine-tune a veneer lathe for Aspenware, a business on the Wabauskang First Nation Reserve.
A research institute dedicated to improving the health of aboriginal Canadians will bear the ceremonial name of the Toronto neurosurgeon who founded it and of a doctor who warned more than 100 years ago that tuberculosis was killing children in Indian residential schools.
Michael Dan, who was heir to his father's generic-drug fortune, donated $10-million last June to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto to create the first privately-funded institute in the world focused on improving health in indigenous communities.
On Monday, it will be named the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health.
"The naming process was difficult, because it wasn't just about ego, it was about consultation with indigenous thought leaders. And the feedback we got was we really need a de-colonized name for this institute if it's going to get the full support of the aboriginal community," Dr. Dan said. "So I said, I've got an Anishinaabe name and I am very proud of it, so why don't we just use that?"
Waakebiness, which means Radiant Thunderbird in the Anishinaabemowin language, is the name given to Dr. Dan three years ago by a medicine man in the Lac La Croix First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. The philanthropist was trying to develop a hydro project in the region, and the First Nations elders gave him an eagle feather and an Anishinaabe name to give him strength.
Bryce is a tribute to Peter Henderson Bryce, the chief medical officer with the departments of the interior and Indian affairs from 1904 to 1907, who sounded the alarm about the large number of aboriginal children in the church-run residential schools who were dying of disease, especially tuberculosis.
Duncan Campbell Scott, the architect of the Indian residential school system, cut the funding for Dr. Bryce's research in 1913, saying the costs far exceeded the benefits.
But in 1922, Dr. Bryce published a pamphlet titled The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921, which prompted the government to establish guidelines for management of the schools.
Dr. Dan said Dr. Bryce is being honoured for his "brave, courageous work" and for standing up to Mr. Scott.
The two doctors have a connection beyond an interest in indigenous health. When the Canadian West was being settled, Dr. Bryce said farmers and labourers from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia would make better immigrants than urban people from Great Britain who spoke English but could not work the land.
"So he had an influence on Canadian immigration policy," said Dr. Dan "and that's how my great grandfather came to Canada."
The institute operates with the input of indigenous people and brings together scholars in public health, medicine, nursing, social work, education, law, anthropology and other disciplines to tackle the problems of First Nations, Inuit and Métis health.
The life expectancy of First Nations people is five to seven years shorter than that of the general population. Among the Inuit, it is 15 years shorter. Indigenous newborns have a mortality rate that is 1.5 times that of babies in the rest of Canada, and they have more birth defects.
Jeff Reading, the institute's interim director, said the gap in life expectancy and quality of life between aboriginal Canadians and the rest of Canada has to be changed. As for the institute's name, Dr. Reading said, "I think it's brilliant how it evolved into this kind of melding of the indigenous name with the sort of pioneer in public health because it brings together that collaboration that we are seeking."
Editor's note: A previous version of this article described the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health as the first research institute in the world focused on improving health in indigenous communities. This has been corrected.