BLENDING TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND
MODERN TRAINING
When you step into RRC Polytech’s Interdisciplinary Health and Community Services Simulation Centre (the Simulation Centre), surrounded by sleek equipment and cutting-edge technology, you might be surprised by something soft, vibrant, and unexpected: drawings of traditional Indigenous Medicines that seem to bloom right out of the walls.
Sweetgrass curls in the corner, sage branches in pale greens and silvers, and Labrador tea in buds and bloom beckon from the end of the hall. Nine large-scale plant drawings are installed in different places around the Simulation Centre, reminding students, staff, and visitors that traditional Medicine is the foundation of today’s medical technology.
Christine Kirouac, the local artist behind the illustrations, says that the creative process for designing the drawings required a lot of patience and many conversations with different people, including with the Knowledge Keepers Council at RRC Polytech. The Knowledge Keepers provided direction on the spiritual and cultural significances of the selected Medicines and the names that described each plant in the different Indigenous languages to which they’re referred.
The Simulation Centre project team envisioned a dynamic health environment that celebrates the latest advancements of modern medicine while honouring the roots of traditional Indigenous Medicines, which have shaped countless contemporary medical practices and remedies.
They selected Kirouac, a Métis interdisciplinary artist, to craft striking illustrations that breathed life into this vision. She took care with every creative decision. Each illustration was created with its final placement in mind. Pezhikhota – sage in Dakota – and wiingashk – sweetgrass in Anishinaabemowin – nestle into the corners of the rooms, as if they’re creeping in from outside. Aupilaktunnguat – or saxifrage in Inuktitut – is the floral emblem of Nunavut, and the drawing bursts with colour in the Quiet Room.
This tension between the clinical and the natural is exactly the point. Kirouac says the drawings don’t feel like decoration. She intended for them to be in conversation with the function of the space – a bridge between traditional knowledge and Western medicine. “There’s often this assumption that these worlds are at odds – like it’s either one or the other,” she says. “But it doesn’t have to be a trade-off. We can integrate. We can let them speak to each other.”
BLENDING TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND MODERN TRAINING
When you step into RRC Polytech’s Interdisciplinary Health and Community Services Simulation Centre (the Simulation Centre), surrounded by sleek equipment and cutting-edge technology, you might be surprised by something soft, vibrant, and unexpected: drawings of traditional Indigenous Medicines that seem to bloom right out of the walls.
Sweetgrass curls in the corner, sage branches in pale greens and silvers, and Labrador tea in buds and bloom beckon from the end of the hall. Nine large-scale plant drawings are installed in different places around the Simulation Centre, reminding students, staff, and visitors that traditional Medicine is the foundation of today’s medical technology.
Christine Kirouac, the local artist behind the illustrations, says that the creative process for designing the drawings required a lot of patience and many conversations with different people, including with the Knowledge Keepers Council at RRC Polytech. The Knowledge Keepers provided direction on the spiritual and cultural significances of the selected Medicines and the names that described each plant in the different Indigenous languages to which they’re referred.
The Simulation Centre project team envisioned a dynamic health environment that celebrates the latest advancements of modern medicine while honouring the roots of traditional Indigenous Medicines, which have shaped countless contemporary medical practices and remedies.
They selected Kirouac, a Métis interdisciplinary artist, to craft striking illustrations that breathed life into this vision. She took care with every creative decision. Each illustration was created with its final placement in mind. Pezhikhota – sage in Dakota – and wiingashk – sweetgrass in Anishinaabemowin – nestle into the corners of the rooms, as if they’re creeping in from outside. Aupilaktunnguat – or saxifrage in Inuktitut – is the floral emblem of Nunavut, and the drawing bursts with colour in the Quiet Room.
This tension between the clinical and the natural is exactly the point. Kirouac says the drawings don’t feel like decoration. She intended for them to be in conversation with the function of the space – a bridge between traditional knowledge and Western medicine.
“There’s often this assumption that these worlds are at odds – like it’s either one or the other,” she says. “But it doesn’t have to be a trade-off. We can integrate. We can let them speak to each other.”