Admissions blog: Sharing Bioethics in our new welcome space
The new Undergraduate Medical Education (UME) Enrolment Services office opened at the end of May. We are located in the Medical Sciences Building, Room 2124 on the main floor, right beside the eastern entrance on Queen’s Park Crescent West. We welcome visitors and are happy to answer your questions relating to your planned or current studies.
From September to June we are open from:
- 8:30am – 5pm Monday
- 9am – 6pm Thursday
- 9am – 5pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday
A highlight of our new Welcome Space in the office is a digital painting called Sharing Bioethics by Indigenous artist, Lisa Boivin.
About the artist
Lisa Boivin is a member of the Deninu K’ue First Nation in the Northwest Territories. She is an interdisciplinary artist and a bioethics specialist at the University of Toronto, where she lectures about cultural safety. Boivin uses her creativity to bridge gaps between bioethics and aspects of Indigenous cultures to promote individual and community learning. “In my paintings I confront the Indian Residential School system and the Sixties Scoop while illuminating the resilience of Indigenous cultures,” Boivin explains. She has completed fifteen paintings over the last year. Each painting takes between 90 and 140 hours to create.
About the digital painting
Sharing Bioethics was created as a way to explain to Boivin’s mother how she marries her work and her Dene culture. “As it developed, it became an honour song for my mother,“ says Boivin.
Boivin explains there are, “No roots in the painting but every element is connected.”
“The black canvas represents Canada’s dark colonial history and the bright colours illuminate the resilience of Indigenous peoples.” Black velvet is also a popular backing in Dene beadwork. Boivin feels that, at times, her painting process often resembles the laborious process of beading because she is painting one pixel at a time.
Boivin painted herself in the image and is seen holding hands with a clinician. They are sharing bioethics. As Boivin notes, “We all have circles of medicine: the Dene medicine and the biological medicine circles overlap.”
On the top of the Dene circle there is a drum representing all of the Dene people. The animals in this painting carry sacred teachings. The raven is master of the sky and the squirrel is master of the ground. The caribou antler represents the transfer of knowledge between generations. The tobacco tie next to Boivin’s hand in the painting is an offering of thanks.
The hawk feather represents a meaningful gift Boivin received from a respected community member prior to giving her first lecture at the Faculty of Nursing. The feather was intended to help her speak to the nurses.
The flowers represent individual teachings that Boivin has received. Each flower is unique and connected by a vine, the sun, a strawberry, an animal or medicine. Most importantly each flower is connected to the earth.
The strawberries in this painting depict a powerful influence in Boivin’s life, her daughter. Strawberries are considered a woman’s medicine and the first medicine to come in the summer. Strawberry is also the first word Boivin learned in her language: įdziáz. It translates literally as little heart.
The butterflies symbolize both a close friend and transformation. Boivin learned from an elder that butterflies also teach children to be children, to walk and laugh. Boivin believes deep belly laughing promotes breathing.
The artist’s mother and father are also present in the painting. Boivin’s father radiates warmth and hospitality from the sun. Her mother is not visible but Boivin knows she is there and is instrumental in all that Boivin is and does, including the medicine.
Having the painting displayed in the Enrolment Services Office Welcome Space is “Extremely meaningful to me and my family,” says Boivin. “We lost a great deal of medicine in the residential schools. That medicine is gone. I have to find a way to make other medicine. Painting is a way to contribute to bioscientific medicine, to make things better and create awareness.” She hopes her painting will encourage discussion and prompt those seeing it to consider their thoughts about Indigenous patients.
To learn more about Boivin, visit her website. To learn about resources and opportunities available to Indigenous medical students, visit the Office of Indigenous Medical Education page.