Government & Medicine

Well-being from within

Nunavut's new health minister � harnessing northern power

By Jane George

Even in her new, modern office, Levinia Brown, Nunavut's new minister of health and social services, maintains her homey ways, offering dried Arctic char, tea and conversation to visitors. "I will always be who I am," she says, in her first interview since Nunavut's new cabinet was announced last month. "You see all this paper lying around, but it won't change me. When I was walking around this weekend, someone stopped me and asked 'Why aren't you driving? � you're a minister.' I said, 'Walking's good for your health!'"

Speaking in Inuktitut (she's keen that her mother tongue become the working language of Nunavut), Ms Brown talks about her plans to bring her vision of a healthy territory closer to the 85% of residents who are Inuit. One month into her new role, she isn't daunted by the enormous challenge facing her in a territory with many of the worst health indicators in Canada.

TRADITION, WITH A TWIST
Inuit and their ancestors have always survived by sharing, working together and communicating, and this is a strategy Ms Brown would like to put to use now as a way of improving the state of health and quality of healthcare in Nunavut. "I want health to get better for everyone in Nunavut. I want to get more Inuit involved in the health profession. I'd like to have more Inuit nurses without lowering the standards, to get Inuit up to par, educated to take over these jobs and to incorporate Inuit Qaujimatujangit [traditions, language and culture]." She also wants to continue repatriating as many health services as possible from the south to Nunavut so that, for example, patients undergoing cancer treatment can remain in their familiar environment instead of having to travel all the way to Ottawa, Winnipeg or Edmonton.

The guiding principle behind Levinia Brown's holistic view of health is that "well-being must come from within first � and then healthy people can reach out to others." She knows it won't be easy, inheriting as she does a cash-strapped department that lacks the money and manpower to meet the territory's growing health and social service needs. Still, she's convinced that overcoming these hurdles has as much to do with prevention and attitude as it does with money. "Once we're on our feet, once people start to realize it's not about money � by starting in the communities, by eating well, by eating the right foods."

That's not to say Ms Brown is going to stop lobbying for more healthcare money for Nunavut. "A lot of people think, mistakenly, that I am only nice, but I also have a lot of strength, and I have the strength to fight for what we need," she says.

AN ARTIC UPBRINGING
Originally from the Kivalliq region, Ms Brown studied at the Churchill Vocational School in Manitoba. Then she qualified as a nursing assistant and worked in British Columbia and Alberta. Returning to the western Hudson Bay community of Rankin Inlet in the late 1970s, Ms Brown discovered that the Northwest Territories didn't recognize her credentials, so she was only able to work as an interpreter at a health centre. Frustrated, she changed direction and qualified as a teacher and worked as a teacher, counsellor and administrator until 1999.

She eventually ventured into local politics, became a municipal councillor and served as mayor of Rankin Inlet. In 1999, she ran for a seat in Nunavut's first legislature and lost by just 13 votes. Undeterred, she ran again � and won her seat on February 16. "The first time I stepped into the legislative assembly chamber, I didn't feel uncomfortable, I felt in my place, like a mother," she says.

Through all this she raised seven children and she now has 28 grandchildren � reason to give special focus to issues affecting Nunavummiut women. She belongs to the generation of women who were born on the land, but who ended up having to travel hundreds of kilometres from home to give birth to their own children. As a result, many pregnant women and new mothers, including Ms Brown, were sometimes away from home for weeks or even months on end. Ms Brown decided to take action: one of her past achievements was the creation of a midwife-staffed maternity unit in Rankin Inlet. "Some young women refused to leave to have their babies � that was one of the reasons we started working on this maternity unit," she says. As minister, Ms Brown wants to create similar birthing centres in other Nunavut communities as well as a Nunavut-based program for accrediting midwives.