Dr. Nel Wieman discovers her passion for helping people and becomes Canada’s first female Indigenous psychiatrist
Dr. Nel Wieman (BSc ’88, MSc ’91)
Chief medical officer, First Nations Health Authority
I spent most of my formative years seeking out an identity. As a survivor of the Sixties Scoop, I was taken away from my biological family and shuffled around to five or six different foster homes before being adopted by a Dutch immigrant family at the age of four.
Growing up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, I experienced and witnessed racism a lot. I was kicked and called racial slurs. Yet perhaps the most dehumanizing experience at the time was being grouped with other First Nations kids daily to be inspected by my Grade 4 teacher who felt it important to ensure we were clean behind our ears and under our nails.
This made me feel deeply ashamed of who I was. However, as I watched busloads of First Nations kids being brought in from the nearby reserves to my school every day, while I sat on a bus with white kids, I always felt like I was on the wrong bus.
I knew that to thrive after high school, I would have to move away, and that desire to find a home somewhere else led me to the University of Waterloo. Being a track and field athlete, the most natural fit felt like kinesiology, so I told my parents that my life’s dream was to be a kinesiologist, and off I went. That decision changed the trajectory of my life.
Being a first-year student at Waterloo was the first time I realized that I was smart, capable and could do whatever I wanted to do.
After completing my undergraduate degree, I continued with a master’s in biomechanics at Waterloo and thought I would likely stay and do a PhD and continue working in a lab. But as I was doing my research, which involved analyzing the gait of elderly participants, I realized that they trusted me, and I really enjoyed hearing their stories. It was then that I knew I was meant to work directly with people and switched to medicine.
Shortly after starting medical school at McMaster University, I was serendipitously invited to a meeting by the Native Physicians Association of Canada. I still don’t know how they found out about me, but flying out to Edmonton, Alberta and walking into a room with 20 other people who looked like me was the first time I felt like I had a family.
They taught me where the greatest needs were in First Nations communities. I recognized then that it wasn’t quite the time for an Indigenous neurologist — the specialization path I was headed on in medical school.
“I understand the importance of exercising my privilege and power to advance systemic change — and so my mission for helping people continues.”
— Dr. Nel Wieman (BSc ’88, MSc ’91)
There was, and continues to be, too much trauma in First Nations communities. This affects their mental health, and for some, results in substance use — a fact I couldn’t ignore — so I knew it was an area where I could flourish and make a difference.
I became the first female Indigenous psychiatrist in the country and spent the first eight years working at a newly developed community-based mental health clinic on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.
Today, as chief medical officer of the First Nations Health Authority in British Columbia, I advocate for cultural safety in medical schools and the health system. Whether meeting with our provincial partners or leveraging social media to amplify injustices, there’s a never-ending list of things for me to tackle.
However, having experienced and witnessed firsthand how First Nations peoples are treated differently in accessing and experiencing the health-care system, I understand the importance of exercising my privilege and power to advance systemic change — and so my mission for helping people continues.
