New treatments born in ancient tradition: Annie Smith St-Georges owns the first aboriginal complementary health centre in the Outaouais, but her treatments are not new. As she tells Dave Rogers , 'they're as old as my ancestors.'
The Ottawa Citizen
Fri 05 Mar 2004
Page: F5
Section: City
Byline: Dave Rogers
Source: The Ottawa Citizen
On the surface, the Wage Centre looks like dozens of other medical or chiropractic clinics in Gatineau.
But people who walk through the doors of the first aboriginal complementary health centre in the Outaouais won't just find the usual trappings of such clinics. Instead, the mostly non-aboriginal patients are also being treated using eagle feathers, sweetgrass, cedar, sage, and tobacco -- as well as through chiropractic and massage therapy.
Clinic owner Annie Smith St-Georges helps stressed and grieving clients in a small room in the back using an aboriginal medicine wheel. The wheel -- a circle drawn on a deer skin on a table -- is divided into four quadrants that represent the four elements of the human body: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
"The use of traditional medicines is new to alternative medicine, but it is as old as my ancestors," said Ms. Smith St-Georges said.
The 51-year-old says the Wage Centre (pronounced wagay, which means calm in Algonquin) is the result of ancient Algonquin knowledge about how to help people achieve better health. She eventually hopes to convince a medical doctor to join the clinic.
Devastated by the suicide of her 16-year-old son in 1990, Ms. Smith St-Georges used every form of counselling and therapy she could find to help her cope with the loss. But she still feels as if the tragedy happened yesterday.
"After my son died, I was brought right down to the ground," she said. "It affected me mentally and physically because I was in a state of shock. Spiritually, I found it difficult to believe in the Creator after this happened.
"The eagle feather was offered to me at a conference on suicide. I use it now as a healing feather to pass over the person's body."
An Algonquin from the Kitigan Zibi Reserve near Maniwaki, Ms. Smith St-Georges believed she could help others cope with grief, stress and a variety of physical ailments.
She quit her job as a native employment equity officer with the federal Indian Affairs Department in 1997 and opened the centre on Ste-Bernadette Street in the basement of a medical clinic a year ago.
Besides Ms. Smith St-Georges, the centre staff includes a chiropractor, masso-therapist, orthotherapist, naturotherapist and a nurse.
Patients who experience physical pain may visit the centre's chiropractor, Dr. Pierre Couture, one of the centre's massage therapists, receive a posture analysis or be fitted with foot orthotics.
But Ms. Smith St-Georges says the centre offers treatment for more than physical pain.
Patients who visit for "aboriginal relaxation" immediately notice the aroma of burning sweetgrass in the room. A stuffed panda sits on the floor while a moosehide drum and braided sweetgrass hang on the wall.
Part of the treatment there includes teaching about herbs and the cycle of life.
"With the medicine wheel, we start in the physical section where the child is born, proceed to the teenage years, adulthood and then to the elderly who are getting ready to go home to Mother Earth," said Ms. Smith St-Georges.
"This corresponds to the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual in the tobacco, cedar, sage and sweetgrass parts of the medicine wheel."
She said Algonquins believe that burning sage in a seashell "smudge bowl" increases mental powers and is a medicine for women.
Sweetgrass is regarded as a male medicine. Fresh cedar branches are used to brew a tea that is said to calm emotional distress.
More than than 90 per cent of the clinic's clients are not aboriginals. Ms. Smith St-Georges said most patients are covered by private medical insurance, but she seldom treats aboriginal people because Health Canada's aboriginal health insurance provides enough coverage for only one or two chiropractic treatments.
"It is sad that I cannot treat my own people," she said.
"They want to come to the clinic, but they do not have enough insurance coverage. They are covered by medical insurance like everyone else, but they don't have enough benefits for other forms of treatment."
Complementary medicine is a catch-all phrase that includes naturopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal medicine, aromatherapy and more.
According to Statistics Canada, at least 3.3 million Canadians sought treatment outside the medical establishment in 1995, spending at least $1 billion out of their own pockets for treatments not reimbursed by provincial health plans.
Surveys have shown that four out of 10 Canadians regularly use alternative medicines, and the amount spent on vitamins and herbal supplements is rising 20 per cent a year.
Cathy Rouleau, a spokeswoman for the Quebec Ministry of Health said the government doesn't pay for alternative treatments -- including the kind of care Wage Centre provides -- because they aren't medically recognized.
But Dr. Couture said Health Canada is interested in aboriginal medicine because it may help people recover more quickly.
He said he joined the clinic to help provide patients -- especially aboriginals -- with a variety of different types of complementary medicine.
"The difference about our clinic is the patient decides which services to use and they can control their own health," Dr. Couture said.
"Traditional aboriginal relaxation is something that everybody should experience because it gives you well-being and peace in (your) mind and heart.
"I was curious to see how traditional aboriginal medicine would work. I was surprised to find out how well this medicine works compared to the treatments we know.
"It gives a better result than the regular medicine we take every day."
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