UNA marks National Indigenous Nurses Day

Today is National Indigenous Nurses Day. On April 10, United Nurses of Alberta celebrates the work of Indigenous nurses in Alberta and throughout Canada. 
 
Indigenous Nurses Day is marked on April 10 in honour of Edith Monture, a Kanien’kehà:ka woman who was the first Indigenous Registered Nurse in Canada and the first to gain the right to vote in a Canadian federal election. She was born on this day in 1890 on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve near Brantford, Ont. 
 
Sadly, Monture had to train as a nurse in the United States because no Canadian nursing school would accept her because of her race. She graduated as a Registered Nurse from the New Rochelle Nursing School in New York and became a U.S. Army nurse, serving in France after the United States entered World War I. After the war, Monture returned to Canada and gained the right to vote under the Canadian Military Service Act (1917).
 
Monture died in 1996 at the age of 105. 
 
Edith Monture Avenue, Edith Monture Park, and Edith Monture Elementary School in Brantford are all named after her. In 2025, she was designated a National Historic Person by the Government of Canada, under the Historic Sites and Monuments Act.
 
UNA honours all First Nations, Inuit and Métis nurses and urges members on this day to reflect on this history of Indigenous health care in Canada and Alberta, and to consider how we can all work together to achieve meaningful reconciliation.