Métis-led clinic ready to open in Port Alberni once funding for staff secured
Published 11:30 am Wednesday, June 24, 2026
With plenty of volunteer work and ambition, a Métis-led health centre is preparing to open in Port Alberni.
The health centre, called Mamawii Health Centre, has already secured and renovated a space in town on Pemberton Road to make it feel warm and inviting. There’s Métis-style wallpaper with beaded flowers, art on the walls from Métis artists and two exam rooms complete with equipment. What it hasn’t secured yet is funding for healthcare professionals.
“We are actually limited by funding, like most other concepts are,” said Destinée Barrow, the executive director of Mamawii Indigenous Health and Care Society. “We are at this very moment in time actively working with the Ministry of Health, with the health authority, to be able to expand our idea of what we wanted to do and actually secure some resourcing for our healthcare clinic. Knowing the speed that any type of government initiative works at, it’s not as fast as we need it to be.”
But once it does open its doors, Barrow said it will be a game-changer. The clinic will be open to all but will have a focus on serving urban Indigenous people and giving them access to culturally-informed care.
She said healthcare with a Western approach focuses purely on diagnosis and treatment, whereas traditional ways of medicine can look at things like identity and values. Bringing those two things together will create an environment that honours both western and traditional knowledge, Barrow said.
“First Nations, Métis and Inuit people fall under more of an underserved population. Underserved populations often have a higher number of chronic health conditions. This imbalance that exists is one that I think we are starting to respond to a little bit better too as a health-care system,” she said.
Once opened, the health centre will include traditional, diagnostic healthcare as well as social workers and other support services to help patients address root causes affecting their health.
The Mamawii Health Centre is B.C.’s first Métis-led facility like it. Barrow said it’s exciting to be able to have a health clinic that will visibly be a Métis space.
“We often see inside those places and spaces the local culture reflected, which we absolutely should. In an urban Indigenous space where there are more of a mixture of cultures or people that might be from other places, we don’t really see Métis people reflected in those spaces,” Barrow said.
“I mean by seeing the type of artwork that we would relate to or beadwork or things that are very much part of who we identify with on display. And that’s something that we really wanted to be able to change in the health-care clinic that we built.”
On top of the beadwork wallpaper and work from Métis artists on display, they also commissioned a piece from a Nuu-chah-nulth artist that shows the connection between Métis people being present in Nuu-chah-nulth territory.
While they work on getting funding for health-care providers for the clinic, Barrow said the society is working with the community and continues to build relationships and partnerships.
“We hope to continue to nurture our Métis community members and supply them with opportunities to be able to have positions there that are both health professions but also the supportive positions like our administrative assistants, people that do volunteer work, we are really hoping to be able to have Elders that are involved because they’re a really big part of what we’re doing,” Barrow said.
The Alberni-Clayoquot Métis Society led the creation of the Mamawii Indigenous Health and Care Society to deliver primary care to people in the Alberni Valley. Barrow said they’re very motivated to get this clinic open and to have it done right.
“We are making sure every move we do is thoughtful, meaningful and purposeful. And that we’re taking our time to make sure that we do this right, so that when we actually get to open our doors, that we have a team of people assembled that are ready to take on the challenge that is primary-care delivery,” Barrow said. “It’s not something that you can just throw up a sign and open the doors, you really have to understand the community that you’re serving and that is where we focus a lot of our work.”
They’ve also had support from the Métis Nation of B.C., which Barrow said has been absolutely essential.
“We do not have access to anything like our First Nations cousins do, who can work with the First Nations Health Authority,” she said. “That doesn’t exist for Métis in British Columbia. We are very much in a very different kind of support environment even though we’re one of the three recognized Indigenous groups in Canada. And this is something that we continually try to navigate.”
But Barrow described Mamawii as “the little clinic that could” and she’s confident it will be able to open its doors and provide healthcare to people in Port Alberni. While they’d open their doors tomorrow if they had the funding, she said she hopes to see it happen by fall.
People can learn more about Mamawii and watch for updates on the clinic at mamawiiihcs.org.