It is said that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second-best time is today. September is our reminder to reflect and recommit to learning about the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous Peoples in Canada—and how we, as health care professionals, can contribute to change.

The National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health (NCCIH) is a valuable resource for physicians and health care providers. Established in 2005 by the Government of Canada and funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, it “support[s] First Nations, Inuit and Métis public health renewal and health equity through knowledge translation and exchange.” The NCCIH listens to community voices and shares knowledge to guide meaningful improvements in public health. Its work includes supporting research, producing reports, and co-creating resources rooted in Indigenous perspectives and priorities.

The NCCIH is hosted in Prince George, BC, on the unceded traditional territory of the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation. At the BCMJ, we’re excited to share that one of our Editorial Board members, Dr Terri Aldred, was appointed as the academic lead at NCCIH on 7 May 2025. Dr Aldred’s priorities include serving edge populations and communities first and translating more of the NCCIH’s work on cultural safety and humility and Indigenous-specific antiracism standards into best practices for everyday clinical applications.

As we work toward decolonizing health care in Canada, it’s important to amplify Indigenous-led governance in public health. I asked Dr Aldred a few questions about her new role with the NCCIH and how physicians and researchers from across BC can get involved.

Q: If a medical learner or community physician in BC wanted to get involved but didn’t know how, where could they start?

A: The NCCIH has close ties with universities across the country and with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. We focus on knowledge translation of research for Indigenous populations and support research by request from independent researchers, academics, funders, and community groups.

Q: Tuesday, 30 September 2025, is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action 18–24 focus on Indigenous health, including recognizing Indigenous healing practices. Can you share an example where this is done well?

A: Lu'ma Native Housing Society has its own primary care clinic with sweat lodges, traditional medicines, Elders, and other traditional healing offerings. It is also guided by the urban Indigenous community it serves. It’s an excellent example.

Q: At the BCMJ, we are aiming to evolve how we learn and share research, including Indigenous ways of knowing and storytelling as valid and essential forms of health knowledge. What community-led projects or NCCIH publications would you like to highlight that help promote Indigenous worldviews?

A: Cultural safety and humility initiatives are a highlight of the NCCIH’s work. The Health Arts Research Centre recently released an open-access anticolonial learning resource called HEAL Healthcare (Hearts-based Education and Anti-colonial Learning in Healthcare). It is arts-based training about how to address bias in medicine through poetry, storytelling, visual arts, and other creative tools.

I learned about the NCCIH through its emails, which you can sign up for at the bottom of its website (www.nccih.ca [11]). You can also search publications by health topic on the site. The cultural safety and respectful relationships collection, for example, contains a Diversity Awareness Self-Reflection Tool with 25 questions to help guide future reading and learning to improve patient-centred care.[1]

In this issue of the BCMJ, we’ll hear from Dr Lui in the President’s Comment about honoring truth and pursuing reconciliation outside the clinic, as well as from the BCCDC on truth telling in public health. The breadth of these commentaries speaks to the wide-reaching concern about anti-Indigenous racism in health care. Reforming our systems in pursuit of reconciliation will continue to be complex, difficult, and multifaceted, but we have solved complex problems together in the past. In fact, solving problems is what physicians do every day. September is a reminder of the opportunity we have for humility, listening, and growth—both as individual practitioners and as a profession striving to do better.
—Caitlin Dunne, MD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License [12].

References

1.    Alberta Health Services. Diversity awareness self-reflection tool. March 2015. Accessed 6 August 2025. www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/hp/phc/if-hp-phc-rc-gen-diverse-awareness-reflection-tool.pdf [13].