The UBC Department of Surgery hosted a day for first year residents to learn about Indigenous and anti-colonial ways of knowing and being on October 6, 2025.
Less than one-week prior to Canada’s National Truth and Reconciliation Day, residents were welcomed by Dr. Elder Roberta Price, from the Snuneymuxw and Cowichan First Nations. Elder Roberta appealed to residents to think about ways of understanding historic and current trauma faced by many First Nations, Metis, and Inuit patients. Elder Roberta also reminded residents to be kind and loving toward themselves and their colleagues in what will be a sometimes-challenging life-long journey of practicing culturally safe and culturally humble medicine and care.
Dr. Sheona Mitchell-Foster, a OBGYN surgeon who lives and works in Dakelh Territory, reminded the residents that culturally safe and culturally humble care begins by acknowledging gradients of power and privilege while accepting that we can be excellent surgeons and still cause untold harm because of our biases. These biases, as Family Physician Dr. Terri Aldred (a medical educator, health director, and member of the Tl’azt’en Nation) explained, have long and terrifyingly resilient histories in medicine and settler society at large. The need to acknowledge and actively dispel biases against Indigenous patients and colleagues was carefully detailed, with comprehensive evidence about impacts of biases that too often go unacknowledged and are misunderstood, by Dr. James Liu, an Emergency Medicine physician who has witnessed first-hand the violence of anti-Indigenous racism on hospital wards. Before a closing offered by Elder Price, when residents carefully folded and tied into being small medicine bundles to remind them of their day’s lessons, Dr. Sarah de Leeuw offered poetry and an art project.
Reflections about the day included feeling the lectures were “informative,” “valuable,” “generous,” “profound,” and “eye-opening.” One resident noted what they learned inspired them “to challenge some of the norms I’ve adopted to make sure they are in line with the type of physician I want to be for my patients.”
Dr. James Liu, Dr. Sarah de Leeuw, Dr. Terri Aldred and Dr. Elder Roberta Price