A First Nation says it aims to defy Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government by establishing a safe haven for gender-affirming medical care.
Leaders of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation say access to health care is a treaty right and falls under its inherent jurisdiction.
Late last year, Smith’s United Conservative Party government used the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to shield its legislation from court challenges.
The law prohibits doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy to transgender and gender diverse children under 16.
The premier has said its aim is to protect children and their fertility. Doctors and national medical associations have pushed back, noting puberty blockers don’t render a person infertile.
This week, during a gathering to mark 150 years since the signing of Treaty 6, Saddle Lake Chief Dale Steinhauer said the law is one of many that are dehumanizing.
“No longer will our children and families have their rights taken away,” she announced at Fort Pitt Provincial Park, Sask., on Wednesday.
“When one group’s rights are removed, we are all affected.”
The nation, located 170 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, said it’s working to attract clinicians to provide care on its reserve land.
It has also started fundraising to develop its health law and defend it against potential legal challenges.
Steinhauer said clinicians who provide gender-affirming care on reserve land would be exempted from sanctioning by regulatory bodies.
“To the medical profession and regulatory bodies like the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta: when will you stop this violence?” she said.
An email statement from the college said the organization respects Steinhauer and recognizes the treaty rights of all First Nations, as well as the rights and interests of transgender minors and their families.
“CPSA will continue to support regulated members in understanding their professional responsibilities while providing respectful, compassionate and evidence-informed care within the bounds of applicable legislation, including laws that apply to the treaty rights of First Nations.
When asked on Thursday, Smith said she doesn’t have any authority over the First Nation and respects its sovereignty.
“They are an independent nation, so I’ll be interested to see if they’re able to attract a doctor to do that,” Smith said while attending the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association annual conference in Edmonton.
‘I would have loved to have me as a doctor’
Dr. James Makokis, a two-spirit family physician from Saddle Lake Cree Nation, became emotional at the announcement while speaking about the impact of violence against two-spirit and transgender people, including self-harm.
“That is a public health emergency that has to stop,” said Makokis.
“When there’s a threat to the buffalo calves in the herd, all of the adult buffalo form a circle around those young ones, because they’re the next generation.”
Makokis said providing young two-spirit people with proper gender-affirming care is one way to combat high rates of suicide and other “horrible statistics” affecting the community.
“If I had someone that looked like me, that had braids like me, that spoke Cree like me, that understood our medicine and our ways of being, that would have been incredible,” said Makokis.
“I would have loved to have me as a doctor.”
For parents like Tyler Youngchief, councillor for Kehewin Cree Nation, Steinhauer’s announcement hits close to home. His seven-year-old son, Presley Miyoskwam Napew Youngchief, came out as transgender at the age of three.
“The moment he started vocalizing he was a boy and that’s who he is, there was no hesitation between my spouse or myself or his siblings,” Youngchief told CBC News. “It was just full-on acceptance right from our whole family.”
But both Youngchief and Makokis know the road to creating a gender-affirming care safe haven won’t be easy.
Youngchief said bullying in the form of homophobia and transphobia directed at Presley are his biggest concerns for the future.
Makokis added that fear is a familiar feeling for marginalized groups like trans and two-spirit people.
“It’s really important for us as individual clinicians, as individual physicians, as citizens of this democratic country known as Canada, for people to stand up,” said Makokis.
“Sometimes that means as individuals we have to risk losing some of our own individual freedoms, and in my case that could be my medical licence.”
Steinhauer cited the medicine chest clause unique to Treaty 6, which says the Crown will keep a medicine chest in the home of each federal government agent working on or near a reserve.
It’s widely understood by First Nations to be a commitment to provide comprehensive health care, and Indigenous leaders have criticized the Crown for failing to live up to the promise.
Steinhauer asked how the Alberta government could stop First Nations doctors from practising, or accessing the medicine chest.
“Have the colonial governments not learned enough from their own history?”
Alberta’s health-care law is one of three from the UCP government impacting transgender people across the province.
Another requires parental consent for students under 16 to change their names or pronouns at school. The third bans transgender athletes 12 and older from participating in amateur competitive female sports.
NDP MLA Brooks Arcand-Paul, who represents Edmonton-West Henday and is shadow minister for Indigenous relations, said the Alberta NDP support Saddle Lake Cree Nation’s exercise of sovereignty.
“As a two-spirit person, I wish I had this protection when I was younger. I wish I had this understanding that our two-spirit kin are scared,” Arcand-Paul told CBC News. “I wish I didn’t have to think I did not belong here.”
Heather Jenkins, a spokesperson for Justice Minister Mickey Amery, repeated in a statement Wednesday that the laws are about preserving choice for children and youth, strengthening the role of parents, and ensuring fairness and safety in amateur competitive sports.
“Alberta’s United Conservative government will be unapologetic in our commitment to these principles,” she said.