One of first U of S Indigenous nursing grads says balance is key to field, life
- Andréa Ledding | March 02, 2017
Janet Spence-Fontaine is one of the first Aboriginal nursing graduates from the University of Saskatchewan, hailing originally from the North, and graduating in 1965.
“I’m currently a member of Sagkeeng,” she notes. Now retired, she is the spouse of well-known politician Phil Fontaine. “I live in Winnipeg and am a 24 hour caregiver to my mom: she's 98 and holding it together.”
She notes there were other graduates ahead of her such as Jean Cuthand-Goodwill and Anne Thomas, but nobody else has come forward or identified, so she recently returned to her alma mater to address the many Indigenous graduates enrolled now.
She wasn’t someone who grew up with a burning desire to be a nurse, it was more of a process of elimination for her, but she adds nurses are needed everywhere.
“My field ended up being public health and I have done other things since, always with the component of Aboriginal health and always with the idea that we need to be in balance in our four bodies.”
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A major Indigenous contribution to the health field is awareness of balance in the mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional realms, she notes, something she needed during her own five year degree.
“The program that I got into was heavy with the sciences and that's not naturally my field - some people have that gift for sciences but I didn't and just had to slog away,” said Spencer-Fontaine. Her first posting was with the Prince Albert health district, in public health. “The disconnect between community and the theoretical things I was learning just seemed so big, that's why I ended up going into public health nursing and from there into community development.”
She grew up with an expectation that she would go to university – her father was a 1927 graduate from Emmanuel College, and didn’t retire from teaching until he was 87.
“There was a strong belief in education being the answer to a lot of the challenges that Indian people would face,” she explained. She grew up in many small towns, often the only First Nations family around, and was even directed by her Wilkie school principal to not drop French so that she would be accepted to university. “Everyone supported me and put me into that direction…so in that sense it wasn't an agonizing struggle and I didn't really think about it too much…I wasn't alone in my family to go.”
Her mother, in fact, achieved a BFA at the University of Manitoba after raising her children.
“It's never too late. She had gone to high school at the Brandon Residential School and then she hadn't felt that she had gotten enough out of it so she took some classes by correspondence after she was done there, it was a mindset. When she was 55 she decided to go to university and some of my aunts did as well.”
She credits their inspiration, along with her mother’s can-do attitude of quiet support, trusting that each kid would find their own way. From public health, Spence-Fontaine went on to community development, and became an adult educator when a teacher didn’t arrive.
“The Chief came to see me…I said I'm not a teacher and my baby is small, so he said I've got a babysitter, and there I was, learning on the job.”
While the Chief’s wife babysat her infant, she helped adults earn their GED.
“From there some went on to nursing, you never know what small things you do that will have an effect in other people's life,” she observed. She also worked at the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood when position papers were being written in response to the federal government’s White Papers, called "Our Tomorrow" or "Wahbung." She has also worked on local history projects, lived in Whitehorse, and volunteered with women’s organizations, which led to work for the Manitoba Women’s Directorate and localizing control of health with the federal government and northern development strategy for a cabinet committee. Her most unexpected job was as first director of the Tourism Secretariat for Manitoba, eventually coming full circle to work for the Aboriginal Health branch before retirement.
“Balance is what I was after, at an individual level and for my family and for the rest of the world as well.”