Go the Distance podcast Ep. 11: Building a new approach to Indigenous health

Go the Distance is a limited series podcast from Athabasca University (AU) that features stories from students of all backgrounds—from working parents to Olympic athletes—who have discovered the transformative effect of open, online learning.

Listen to Episode 11

Narrator

Shelley Wiart is a proud Métis woman.

Shelley Wiart

I am a member of the North Slave Métis Alliance. I live on Treaty 6 Territory in Lloydminster, Alta.

Narrator

She embraced her identity late in life after finding her birth father. After going on her own healing journey, she noticed some of the health problems her community was facing. So she decided to devote herself to a life of research and advocacy, redefining how we think about health care.

Shelley Wiart

You know, my personal history is that I was given up for adoption as a baby. And I’m Métis. So I actually grew up with a settler-colonial family.

Narrator

She wasn’t exposed to Indigenous culture as a kid.

Shelley Wiart

And I reclaimed my identity when I found my birth father, in Yellowknife in 2006. So I’ve been through an entire process of decolonization and reclaiming my own culture. And so I think, you know, one of my gifts that I have is that I’ve healed myself.

Narrator

Shelley was 26 at the time. She continued to develop a relationship with her birth father, and later her birth mother too. And when her dad was dealing with health issues, she showed up to support him.

Shelley Wiart

My dad is a Type 2 diabetic, and in 2015, he became an insulin-dependent Type 2 diabetic. And that’s when I decided to run a half marathon for Team Diabetes to support him on his health journey with diabetes. And when I was out training in my community, I noticed that there weren’t any Indigenous women at the gym or running.

And as I became more familiar with Type 2 diabetes, I realized that Indigenous women are four times as likely to have Type 2 diabetes as non-Indigenous women. And, you know, I’ve struggled with my own weight. At my heaviest, I was 220 pounds. So I know what it’s like to not know where to begin. And I also know how intimidating gyms can be.

Narrator

So she decided to start a health program. By that time she was living in Lloydminster. That’s where she co-founded a group called Women Warriors that offered a space for Indigenous women to come work out and talk about health. Through round circle discussions, participants would share their stories. And what Shelley was hearing was that the barriers women were dealing with weren’t just physical.

Shelley Wiart

You know, I was hearing a lot of barriers that had to do with the social determinants of health, housing, education, access to quality health care, access to good quality food, so food security. So you know, instead of taking a biomedical view of Indigenous women’s health and saying the reason that you have diabetes is because you eat low-quality food, the real reason has to do with the social determinants of health.

Narrator

Women Warriors was a success, and it started to grow.

Shelley Wiart

We ended up getting an Alberta government recreation and physical activity division grant to run the program in Lloydminster. And then we continued on with that grant to run the program at Onion Lake Cree Nation and 2018. And it also expanded out to the City of Calgary and they ran two programs for a couple years.

Narrator

But Shelley figured if she really wanted to make change to the system, she needed to go back to school. The problem is, when you live in a city of 30,000 people, options are limited.

Shelley Wiart

So I have three girls. Their ages are 11, nine and seven and we live in a rural location. We live in Lloydminster, Alberta, and there just was no way that I could move to a larger city to go to university because my husband lives here and works for an oilfield company called Husky. So one of my only options was to do long-distance learning.

Narrator

So she did exactly that. She enrolled in a degree in sociology and gender studies at Athabasca University and focused on Indigenous health research.

Shelley Wiart

You know, my research comes from my heart and it comes from my own experience with Women Warriors and listening to those round circle discussions and understanding Indigenous women’s health on a very deep level on a spiritual level.

Narrator

She got a grant to do a digital storytelling project. She would sit down with women for long sessions, at least 12 hours she says, where they would talk about their health.

Shelley Wiart

And what I found when I sat down to do the digital stories with Indigenous women, it was like therapy.

Narrator

Shelley was looking for stories of strength and resilience.

Shelley Wiart

So the first two participants I had, Maxine talked exclusively about her mother’s residential school attendance at St. Barnabas. And then my next participant, Beatrice, talked about her own residential school experience and then that of her parents and her grandparents, so she’s a third-generation residential school survivor. A huge gaping hole in her heart is her loss of language. She can no longer speak her Cree language.

So when you talk about Indigenous People’s health, you know when people have taken away your language, that is a huge soul wound. And then in in kind of juxtaposition to Beatrice’s story is Dorothy’s story. She is speaking her language, her traditional language since she was born. And she talks about how important that is for her own health.

Narrator

One thing that Shelley got out of her education was mentorship. She speaks fondly of her supervisor, Dr. Janelle Baker, an associate professor in the anthropology department.

Shelley Wiart

The support last summer from Dr. Baker was really essential to my digital storytelling project because it was the first time I’d ever been involved in research on my own, you know, I would show her the digital stories. I was able to call her up whenever I needed she’s also Métis. So another Métis academic that could relate to working with Indigenous populations and really giving me some, you know, moral support as well as research support.

Narrator

Here’s Janelle.

Dr. Janelle Baker

Shelley already has this amazing Women Warriors project, right. And so this is just coming from her existing work and of course, she wants to get course credit for it. So we work together to get you know, a course designation for her to be able to do that.

Narrator

The project also involves travelling to Yellowknife. Janelle came along.

Shelley Wiart

We had a knowledge translation session called Legacy in Yellowknife, where all five of the women presented their digital stories to Yellowknife community members, including medical professionals. So part of this research is more about strength-based resiliency, teaching health-care professionals how to do cultural safety in a way that is coming directly from the source not from me, the researcher.

Narrator

From Janelle’s perspective, Shelley is already making an impact.

Dr. Janelle Baker

To me, there is an incredible amount of value in the doing of this project. But there have been several opportunities for her to present to health-care workers. And I think it’s really had some impacts on individuals in a personal way. And I’m trying to understand how cultural security is so important.

Narrator

Shelley’s ambition for her digital storytelling project isn’t stopping at her undergrad degree. She wants to get her master’s, and open up even more areas of research.

Shelley Wiart

You know, the sky’s the limit. And the best thing about Athabasca University, it’s prepared me to be an at-home, productive employee. So whatever I do, I know I have the skill set to do it from home if I want to, you have to have very clear boundaries about what’s going to get you ahead in life. And I’m telling you right now, a university education is the number-one priority to get me ahead and to where I want to be because I am going to be an amazing leader. And I need to have my undergrad and my master’s. So I’m just very clear about what my goals are and how I’m going to get there.