The University of Toronto unveiled the name of its new aboriginal health institute on Monday, bringing the vision of a world-class research facility dedicated to indigenous issues one step closer to reality.

The Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health, which will be housed in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, was made possible by a $10 million donation from Toronto neurosurgeon and philanthropist Dr. Michael Dan last June.

The institute’s dual name alludes to the collaboration between native and non-native people that will be needed to combat the complex health problems faced by aboriginal people across Canada.

Waakebiness, or “radiant thunderbird from the south,” is the ceremonial name given to Dan at the Lac La Croix First Nation, a Northern Ontario community where he has been collaborating on a hydroelectric project.

Bryce refers to Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, founder of the Public Health Service of Ontario, who served as chief medical officer with the Departments of the Interior and Indian Affairs from 1904 to 1907. Bryce is remembered for having alerted the government to the high mortality rates in the residential school system from treatable diseases like tuberculosis.

The Star asked new interim director Jeff Reading, an epidemiologist and the first scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health, to explain it. Reading is a member of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Nation in Prince Edward County.

What was the impetus behind an indigenous-specific health centre at U of T?

At the CIHR, we created a network of research centres that were all engaged in improving aboriginal health, but they have since been dissolved. This is a new initiative that came out of the desire of Michael Dan to do something to improve the gap in life expectancy and well-being between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in Canada.

Will this be a hub bringing all the research centres together?

Yes. I think hub is a good way to frame it, because a hub has spokes and spokes go out to various communities and interests and expertise levels. If you believe, as I do, that the health care system needs to be guided by evidence, since not everybody has the all the capacity or expertise in all the areas of health care, this really drives us to develop partnerships and alliances.

Often research centres involve the director working with a small group of collaborators to drill down deep in a highly-specialized topic area. Aboriginal health isn’t really like that. It’s about going into a wide diversity of topic areas, anything from diabetes to infant health to HIV, and to be able to work with communities, but also with the researchers who have expertise in those fields.

What is the scope of the centre’s research?

It’s going to be relevant to community needs going from local to regional to national and international perspectives. There are striking similarities in the situation of indigenous people in Canada and in other countries. A lot of it is affected by factors like income, inequality, education, community infrastructure, housing and water quality. Actually, it relates more back to colonization and the economic situation indigenous people find themselves in relation to the nation state.

To what extent will the centre be academic or hands-on? Will you be producing experts to go out to aboriginal communities?

There are two guiding principles: scientific excellence and community relevance. In the past, often researchers would exploit aboriginal communities. The communities would never see the researcher and then find out later that they were published in some obscure health journal. Things have changed. We’ve developed ethical guidelines that make it necessary to have a partnership between the communities being researched and the academy, like the University of Toronto.

A third point is that we’re not going to be afraid to address difficult questions and challenge the status quo in areas that are sensitive and a bit uncomfortable, like racism in the health care system, vulnerable child health and violence against women.

How will you work with existing aboriginal and public health organizations?

We’re developing a community advisory council. We already have two co-chairs. One is Dr. Malcolm King, scientific director of the CIHR’s Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health. He’s a member of the Mississaugas of the Credit River, on whose traditional territory U of T campus is located.

His co-chair is Margo Greenwood, who is the scientific lead of the Public Health Agency of Canada’s collaborating centre on aboriginal health. She’s Cree from northern Alberta. We will work together to determine the aboriginal representatives who will be on that council.

That is going to be a real important governance model, because we’re going to take our priorities from the council. The truth is that we can’t focus on everything. We have to determine the first issues we work on and how we go from there.

$10 million seems like a lot of money on first blush, but how long will it last?

Eighty per cent will be invested in an endowment and available to the institute in perpetuity. The remaining 20 per cent will be spent to get the institute up and running over the first critical five years.

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There is a lot of potential for growth. We’re looking at trying to raise funds, but we also are going to be hiring staff who will be required to have their own research programs that will contribute to the institute in terms of operating grants and awards.

Correction – March 24, 2015: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the day on which the name of the new aboriginal health institute was revealed.