Clinical, Community, Ecological, and Planetary Health in a Complex Indigenous Community
Dr. Ojistoh Kahnawahere Horn, a Bear Clan Mohawk/Haudenosaunee family physician from Kahnawake and Akwesasne, will share how intertwined systems—land, water, politics, and medicine—shape health in her border-straddling community. Grounded in both clinical practice and traditional knowledge, she will explore the layered impacts of pollution, energy infrastructure, and jurisdictional conflict on individual and community wellbeing. Her work in Akwesasne offers a lens through which to understand broader health and environmental challenges facing Indigenous communities across Turtle Island.
This keynote will be presented by Dr. Ojistoh Horn.
Bio: Dr. Ojistoh Horn is Kanienkeha:ka. Her mother is from Kahnawake, Québec, and her father is from Akwesasne, which saddles the borders of Ontario, Québec, and New York State. She works as a family physician, taking care of her people through all stages of the lifecycle. Supervising medical students and family medicine residents during their rural rotations in Akwesasne, she emphasizes the complexities of providing primary care to Indigenous peoples and their communities. Drawing on both Western and traditional paradigms, working with like-minded physicians across the country, with a focus on the effects of the environment and pollution on health, Dr. Horn promotes the inclusion and support of traditional knowledge and “ways of being” in a framework for providing holistic and primary care to her people. Dr. Horn is president of the Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada.