The nation held a formal opening ceremony Friday for the new centre, which will offer its members and those from other First Nations culturally infused treatment.
The Esquimalt Nation held a formal opening ceremony for a new health centre on Friday that will offer its members access to health care, dental services and culturally infused treatment.
The building includes nine health offices and four clinic spaces, along with a dental room, community kitchen and traditional healing room for cultural ceremonies.
The project, funded by the First Nations Health Authority, was eight years in the making.
The groundbreaking was in 2024, and health-care workers moved from their old space in the administration building to the new building early last month.
Chief Jerome Thomas said the building offers people the chance to participate in healing ceremonies in a private, modern setting.
He said it can be challenging to incorporate ceremonies, which are used for spiritual healing when someone is ill, into standard health-care settings without drawing attention.
“Our culture isn’t a quiet culture,” he said.
“You’ll either hear the hooves of a deer or shells of the sea clashing against each other.
He said many of the 384 Esquimalt Nation members don’t have family doctors, so having a health clinic close by that offers primary care will be a game-changer.
The centre will also serve other local First Nations, he said, like the Songhees, T’Sou-ke and SC’IȺNEW̱, or Beecher Bay nations.
Thomas said his favourite part of the new health centre building, which was designed by North Vancouver-based Range Architecture Inc., is the reception area, which includes high ceilings and a centre skylight that resembles a smoke hole in a longhouse.
Nurse practitioner Liz Lofts, who splits her time between the Esquimalt health centre and the Victoria Native Friendship Centre’s Camas Lelum primary care clinic on Tillicum Road, said she has already heard from patients that they love the new building.
“It’s nice to be in such a beautiful, open and welcoming space,” said Lofts, who also does home visits.
“People are able to access care quickly, urgently and within their safe community.”
Angela Potskin, clinic lead for the First Nations Primary Care Initiative, said the health centre has a registered nurse, mental-health clinician, medical office assistant and nurse practitioners, and is in the process of hiring a family doctor from the Wei Wai Kum Nation near Campbell River.
Potskin said that having a clinician who understands the often difficult relationship First Nations people have with health care is vital.
“We want community members to feel comfortable, to not feel triggered, and to be able to say: ‘Hey, I’m in my home nation, and I get to see a physician who is also Indigenous.’ ”
Potskin said non-Indigenous practitioners go through an anti-racism training program designed by the Provincial Health Services Authority.
The space will also allow youth to see Indigenous people working as health-care professionals, said Potskin, who hopes it will encourage them to pursue those careers.
“That’s really the goal — the sovereignty of a nation.”