  As
a teenager, scientifically minded Gilles Pinette ventured
from his hometown of Binscarth, Manitoba to visit a sweat
lodge on a nearby reserve. He wanted to explore his aboriginal
roots, but the young Métis liked to think of himself
as a rational being and had no intention of undergoing
a spiritual conversion. But in that sweat lodge in rural
Manitoba the young man experienced his first mystical
'vision' � a common enough phenomenon in aboriginal legend
but hard to account for when it came up against the laws
of science. He asked the band's elder for a rational explanation,
only to have the enigmatic sage admonish him, "Think with
your heart, not with your mind." For the lad, it was a
revelation. "To me that made a lot of sense," he recalls.
As his exploration continued, he came to find a great
deal more sense in aboriginal wisdom and healing practices
than he ever expected.
REBEL
WITH A CAUSE
His spiky, tousled hair at odds with his sober, wire-rimmed
spectacles, Dr Gilles Pinette epitomizes the rebel-traditionalist.
Growing up in Binscarth, a small town about five hours
west of Winnipeg, in a household filled with family
members of mixed French Canadian and aboriginal extraction,
the aspiring MD became perfectly at ease straddling
the two cultures. In 1993, during his qualifying interview
for the University of Manitoba's med school, he brazenly
announced that he intended to incorporate aboriginal
healing traditions into his medical education. "I really
challenged them," he says. "Leaving the interview I
thought I must have blown it."
He was wrong. Not only did he get
in, but the med school administrators offered him the
chance to develop an extra-curricular program to introduce
his colleagues to "the original Western medicine," as
he calls it. With the help of fellow aboriginal medical
student Nadine McDougall, he invited traditional elders
to the school to give lectures and organized field trips
to sweat lodges. By the time they graduated, studies
of the medicine wheel and the aboriginal approach to
mind-body balance, among other traditions, had become
fixtures in the curriculum. He still goes back to the
university from time to time as a guest lecturer on
a wide range of topics, from aboriginal health to communication
skills for MDs.
Creating a new university course
to share his vision is typical of Dr Pinette. Where
he sees a gap, he will step in to fill it � and this
man sees gaps everywhere. When the Aboriginal Peoples
Television Network was launched in 1999, he told the
execs they ought to include a program about aboriginal
health issues. He soon found himself on the air, hosting
a weekly medical news program called Medicine Chest.
After completing the gruelling process of taping a year's
worth of shows, Dr Pinette decided to strike out on
his own and independently produced a documentary on
the little-publicized topic of hepatitis C among aboriginal
people. The program is currently in the editing stage.
FAMILY
MAN WITH A MISSION
Between all these extracurricular activities, Dr Pinette
and his wife Carolyn somehow manage to find time to
raise their three young children, Matthew, eight, Joshua,
six and Megan, one. Luckily his family is very understanding
about the many projects he has on the go � that's a
good thing, because he's always on to the next big thing.
Having conquered the small screen,
Dr Pinette moved on to the realm of print. In 2001,
as his TV work brought him in contact with more and
more of the aboriginal public, Dr Pinette heard about
something that disturbed him: many young aboriginals
were unaware of the numerous scholarships, awards and
bursaries available to help them get a higher education.
His own knack for tapping into this very funding source
had carried him through medical school, so he decided
to help. He researched the subject and put the information
together into a makeshift book. Initially, he printed
small quantities of the book and distributed them to
young aboriginal Canadians for free. But demand for
it grew so overwhelming that Dr Pinette ended up creating
a self-publishing company to begin printing and distributing
it widely.
One book idea led to another, and
soon he was writing and producing a variety of educational
materials on health issues for young adults, as well
as doing the typesetting and design, and managing the
printing and distribution all by himself. His unconventional
books combine traditional native-style storytelling
with medical information, and tend to cover subjects
of particular concern to aboriginal audiences, such
as diabetes and suicide. Recently, an influx of manuscripts
from eager authors convinced Dr Pinette to expand from
a self-publishing operation to a real publishing house,
called Makinak Publishing, and to begin subcontracting
the design and typesetting work to professionals. With
the help of Cree-Ojibway author Bruce Miller, Dr Pinette
has broadened Makinak's thematic horizons to include
aboriginal sports. He denies that all this should be
deemed work. "I write for sheer enjoyment," he insists,
"and the publishing is really my hobby. Some people
play golf. I do this."
TRADITIONAL
APPROACH
With all the time he saves by not playing golf, Dr Pinette
also manages to pen a monthly syndicated column on healthcare
issues for aboriginal newspapers across Canada and run
a busy family practice in downtown Winnipeg. But even
there he does things very much his own way. It comes
naturally to him to blend modern medicine with the aboriginal
healing tradition and focus on a balance between mind
and body. "People often don't realize how much our bodies
are affected by our emotions," he explains. "For example,
emotional stress can often make diabetics' blood sugar
climb high."
His in-depth conversations with
his patients about their health and their emotions have
clearly informed his writing on medical issues. Both
in his books and his column, he focuses on the everyday
primary care issues that concern people most, and writes
in a homespun style that all can understand. Listening
is the key to his approach, says Dr Pinette. "There's
an aboriginal saying I try to live by," he adds. "'The
creator gave us two ears and one mouth, and we should
use them accordingly.'"
For more information on Makinak
Publishing, please visit www.makinak.com.
|
