Indianz.Com > News > Arne Vainio: We all have an opportunity to redeem
We have an opportunity to redeem
Thursday, August 12, 2021
The Association of American Indian Physicians recently held our annual meeting and conference. American Indian physicians and medical students from all over the nation met on Zoom. In this four day conference we saw our people dedicating their lives to everything from prenatal care and delivering babies to end of life care.
I was asked to close the conference. What can you possibly tell a gathering like this?
In Ojibwe I thanked the four directions for helping us use our language and traditions to help each other. I thanked the spirits in the water, I thanked our grandmother the earth and I thanked the Creator for watching over us.
Then I spoke in English.
They’ve been finding bodies in unmarked graves around residential schools in Canada.

Arne Vainio, MD is an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and is a family practice physician on the Fond du Lac reservation in Cloquet, Minnesota. He can be contacted at a-vainio@hotmail.com.
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