Cheryllee Bourgeois

Cheryllee Bourgeois is a Mother of three, Aunty to many and a Metis Midwife at Seventh Generation Midwives Toronto.  She graduated from Toronto Metropolitan University Midwifery Education program in 2007 and worked as a registered midwife for 11 years before giving up registration to work under the authority of the Indigenous community under the Ontario exemption clause for Aboriginal Midwives.  While she grew up on the west coast, her Cree and Assiniboine ancestry are rooted in the Red River District of southern Manitoba and the Missouri River Basin in North Dakota. Cheryllee has taught in the Toronto Metropolitan University Midwifery Education Program since 2008. She sits on the Core-leadership of the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives and has been involved in multiple projects supporting Indigenous communities to bring birth closer to home.  Her work includes international Indigenous partnerships to support the education, skill development and practice of traditional Indigenous midwifery in Peru and Mexico. 

Cheryllee worked as co-lead in the establishment of the midwife-led and Indigenous governed Toronto Birth Centre, where she continues to serve as President of the Board.  Most recently, through her work with NACM, Cheryllee led the collaborative process to develop Indigenous Midwifery Core Competencies, which is a tool that Indigenous midwives, communities and health programs will use to bring midwifery back to the people. She has been involved in several research projects all with the aim of building community capacity and grounding process and governance in Indigenous community knowledge and ownership. Cheryllee has dedicated her work as a midwife to supporting Indigenous midwifery students, working to both change systems to provide better access to education and create approaches to midwifery education grounded in cultural integrity and Indigenous lived reality - believing wholeheartedly that the practice of self determination supports the health and wellbeing of our Nations. She is thankful to live and work on the traditional territory of the Anishnawbe, Haudenasonee, Huron-Wendat, and Mississaugas of the New Credit peoples.

• International Indigenous Cohort Collaborative
• Baby Bundle Project
• Our Health Counts Toronto

Indigenous Health Counts in Urban Homelands: Estimating COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality among Indigenous Populations Living in Ontario Cities.   

Year: 2020-Current. 

Funding:  CIHR “COVID-19 Resources Canada”.  CO-PIs: Rotondi, Michael A; Bourgeois, Cheryllee; Smylie, Janet K.

Challenges faced by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples face many because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to existing social factors such as poor quality, overcrowded housing, homelessness, and lack of clean running water, infections like COVID-19 can spread quickly. There are also big gaps in data about how COVID-19 is spreading among Indigenous peoples, especially in cities. Information and social networks and from community-based studies, “The Our Health Counts” Toronto, London and Thunder Bay studies were used to learn more about COVID-19 spread and it's impacts on urban communities. In partnership with Indigenous communities, provincial COVID-19 database at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), transmission rates and direct & indirect mortality for Indigenous peoples were calculated.

• MWF108 Aboriginal Childbearing / Indigenous Midwifery
• MWF120 Normal Childbearing

Chapters

• Fletcher, C., & Bourgeois, C. (2015). Refusing Delinquency, Reclaiming Power: Indigenous Women and Childbirth. In BURTON N. (Ed.), Natal Signs: Cultural Representations of Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting (external link)  (pp. 153-171). Bradford, ON: Demeter Press.

Journal articles

• Monchalin R, Smylie J, Bourgeois C. “It’s not like I’m more Indigenous there and I’m less Indigenous here.”: urban Métis women’s identity and access to health and social services in Toronto, Canada. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples. 2020 Dec;16(4):323-31.
• Kitching GT, Firestone M, Schei B, Wolfe S, Bourgeois C, O’Campo P, Rotondi M, Nisenbaum R, Maddox R, Smylie J. Unmet health needs and discrimination by healthcare providers among an Indigenous population in Toronto, Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health. 2020 Feb;111(1):40-9.
• Daoud N, O’Brien K, O’Campo P, Harney S, Harney E, Bebee K, Bourgeois C, Smylie J. Postpartum depression prevalence and risk factors among Indigenous, non-Indigenous and immigrant women in Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health. 2019 Aug;110(4):440-52.
• Monchalin, R., Smylie, J., Bourgeois, C., & Firestone, M. (2019). “I would prefer to have my health care provided over a cup of tea any day”: recommendations by urban Métis women to improve access to health and social services in Toronto for the Métis community (external link) . AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples.
• Kitching, G.T., Firestone, M., Schei, B. et al Unmet health needs and discrimination by healthcare providers among an Indigenous population in Toronto, Canada (external link) . Can J Public Health (2019).
  
• Rotondi MA, O’Campo P, O’Brien K, Firestone M, Wolfe SH, Bourgeois C, Smylie JK. Our Health Counts Toronto: using respondent-driven sampling to unmask census undercounts of an urban indigenous population in Toronto, Canada. BMJ open. 2017 Dec 1;7(12):e018936.

• Sue Williams Excellence in Teaching Award, Faculty of Community Services, 2017