Changing the Narrative

A new Indigenous Scholarship Fund is introducing a more balanced approach to student support

By Kathryn Kinahan, BA’86, MLIS’93

The numbers tell the story.

According to Statistics Canada, 1.7 million people identify as Indigenous. The population has grown 42.5 per cent in the past decade, a rate more than four times that of non-Indigenous people. By 2040, the Indigenous population is likely to top 2.5 million.

However, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples estimates that only 0.1 per cent of physicians in Canada are Indigenous and estimates the ratio of Indigenous physicians to the Indigenous population at roughly 1:33,000, compared with 1:515 for the general population.

The Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry wants to change those numbers for the better.

By establishing the Schulich Indigenous Scholarship Fund, the School looks to create new endowed  scholarships with the goal of covering the full cost of tuition for four Indigenous undergraduate medical students, one student in each year of the four-year program.

The goal is to deliver the first scholarship to a first-year student enrolled for September 2020.

Importantly, Western University offers a robust Indigenous Services team committed to supporting students through social and cultural events, access to Indigenous spaces and Elder and peer mentoring – keeping them engaged for the duration of their program.

The new Indigenous Scholarship Fund struck a chord with two alumni, Douglas and Katherine Gray, who have made a leading gift to launch the fundraising campaign.

“We saw this Scholarship Fund as a chance to do something at Western that will do enormous good in society,” said Douglas Gray, BSc’80, PhD’86, a senior scientist in the Cancer Therapeutics Program at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.

“Currently at the School, scholarship opportunities are not spread equally. So this fund is a way to address some of that imbalance,” he said.

At a recent conference, Gray learned of particular problems Indigenous communities face in the context of cancer, issues above and beyond what the rest of Canadian society faces, such as infectious agents in their communities. “There’s no question that Indigenous physicians, who train at the very best universities and decide to return to their communities to deliver health care, are extremely effective,” he said.

Dr. Davy Cheng, the School’s Acting Dean, agrees. “If we can recruit and retain medical trainees from  Indigenous communities, then there is a good chance that some will return to those communities once they  have completed their training,” explained Dr. Cheng.

The Grays are aware of the impact of receiving a scholarship. Douglas grew up in a community outside of  Toronto. When deciding on a university, he considered all possibilities. The deciding factor was a scholarship.

“Western offered me an admission scholarship which made a huge difference. It made me feel like I was more  welcome here than anywhere else and made me think Western was interested in having me,” he said.

“Katherine and I both have very warm feelings about Western; we are both alumni and recognize the role it  played in our development. We just feel we’re at a point in our lives when we’d like to give back.”