Thank you so much for your question, MP Idlout.
This is all a very long answer. When we look at the state of indigenous people's health in this country, it's directly proportional to the systemic dismantling that has occurred through federal policies and laws.
Our people had our own health systems, method of health, healing and medicines that helped to keep our people strong, well and healthy well into the ages that we're currently living with all of the advance of Western medicine technology and pharmaceutical drugs.
We know that the federal government, from 1884 to 1951, banned ceremonies, including potlatches, indigenous medicines and ways of being that formed the fabric of our medical system. We're seeing the direct results of that in the high rates of chronic disease, infectious disease, suicide and mental health issues that Dr. Adams mentioned.
For there to be a dramatic transformation in all of these health statistics, we need to systematically rebuild indigenous health systems. That starts with funding indigenous healers, elders, medicine people and young people who can train in their footsteps. We're at the verge of the possible extinction of our knowledge as it relates to indigenous medicines when it comes to how to keep our people healthy and well.
We know, when we look at research from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, that indigenous peoples routinely rated our own medicines and access to our healers and medicine people higher and more important than accessing Western medicine, physicians and Western allied health professionals.
When we look at the non-insured health program, as Dr. Adams mentioned, yes, travel to see elders and traditional medicine people is covered, but the compensation to them as practitioners within our own health system, which has been decimated by Canadian law, is not covered. It's left up to the patient to cover themselves. We stopped paying for physician services when the Canada Health Act was implemented back in the 1980s and funding was provided by the federal government to provinces and territories to help pay for physician services.
We also have to pay for indigenous health services practised by our own people for our own people. We know that it works the best. We've had Western medicine for the past—I don't know how many—decades, and we haven't seen a transformation in indigenous mental, physical or spiritual health. What we need is our own medicine supported in a systematic way that has longevity and that our people can access. That's what they're looking for. We haven't seen any funding or resources put towards this.
Indigenous physicians who work with our own elders and healers would be a tremendous resource to help to guide this process, working in conjunction with our own people and our own leaders within our own communities. Unfortunately, there are very few indigenous physicians with that background, but there are some who would be willing to provide this help and guidance.