We Had the Entire Day to Ourselves

Lisa Boivin is a member of the Denin K’ue First Nation in the Northwest Territories. She paints image-based stories that explore the gap between medical and land-based, Dene ethics. She is bioethics specialist and holds a Masters in Medical Science, a Doctorate in Philosophy, and is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow graduate at the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at U of T’s Faculty of Medicine.

“Academics often want you to give an absolute, sweeping bioethical answer that fits into all circumstances, but there are certain land-based ethics that can’t be held in academic language,” she says. “So I translate them through painting. I situate my Dene experience and perspective in the paintings, and then I extract the story.”