Cambridge's newly opened Indigenous-led healthcare clinic 1st of its kind in the region

Over 70 people attended the opening of a new culturally appropriate and Indigenous-led primary healthcare clinic by Southwest Ontario Aboriginal Health Access Centre (SOAHAC) in Cambridge on June 20. 

SOAHAC's new clinic is the first of its kind locally, servicing Guelph and Waterloo Region, and offers primary health care, as well as other services like those for mental health and addictions. 

Charisse Sayer, the integrated care manager for SOAHAC, explained that the care they provide is not only culturally appropriate, but culturally "safe" and "competent" — and that matters.  

"I think it's really important because historically it hasn't always been safe or accessible for our Indigenous community," she said. "Whether it be through systemic racism or just inaccessibility to healthcare."

"So being able to provide this support of advocacy and support of navigation in systems that haven't always been favourable for Indigenous, First Nations, Inuit and Metis people, we're able to provide that support."

Traditional elder Myeengun Henry, who opened the ceremony, stressed the necessity of having this type of care locally.

"Our health is really needing attention," Henry told CBC News. "The Indigenous community has started remembering some of our ceremonies and I think if we are able to activate the traditional medicines and practices that we use, we will have a much stronger community health wise."

He said that there were consequences to not having clinics like this before.

"We would go into an even deeper sense of unhealthiness because now that we have traditional medicines and we have healing practices, many Indigenous people are coming back to it." 

In attendance at Tuesday's ceremony were a number of local politicians, including Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe, Waterloo Regional Chair Karen Redman and Cambridge MPP Brian Riddell. 

"We came to this region because the community really wanted Indigenous health in Indigenous hands," Sayer said. 

"SOAHAC was able to bring forward a team to provide support. We initially started with a team of four and have now quadrupled in size."

Need of services in Cambridge

Sayer explained that SOAHAC has similar clinics in urban centres like Toronto and London, and said that Cambridge made sense because of its proximity to Kitchener and Guelph.

But there is another reason why it's located in Cambridge:

"Kitchener does tend to be the hub for our First Nations, Inuit and Metis agencies, and Cambridge doesn't have any services here," she explained. 

"I do know that there's a lack of services here and we do have a large population of First Nations, Inuit and Metis community here within Cambridge."