Visioning the Future: First Nations, Inuit, & Métis Population and Public Health is a collaborative report offering a vision for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples’ public health. The commissioned report not only complements the Chief Public Health Officer’s 2021 public health vision report but also privileges Indigenous knowledge(s). Visioning the Future represents a multi-faceted vision as articulated by Indigenous peoples from coast to coast to coast.

This Indigenous public health vision uses a determinants of health approach as a framework through which to address inequities experienced by Indigenous peoples across the spectrum of population and public health challenges: racism; infectious diseases; self-determination; data; governance; environment; urban Indigenous populations; mental well-being; and assessment of and response to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples’ well-being.

The report opens with public health visions articulated by the National Indigenous Organizations: The Assembly of First Nations; Métis National Council; and Inuit Tapiriit Kantami. Each subsequent section presents an overview of the current reality for Indigenous Peoples before considering how that reality should change and making recommendations for how to get to that change.

The report reveals the current inequities Indigenous Peoples experience every day but illuminates a path toward equity and wellness that acknowledges Indigenous peoples’ multiple systems for public health and ensures that Indigenous peoples’ knowledge(s) permeate the Canadian public health system. It lays out an achievable public health vision for a future characterized by equity, free of infectious diseases, and free of discrimination and racism.

• Read the NCCIH web story: A Vision for the Future: First Nations, Inuit and Métis Population and Public Health.

• Read or download Visioning the Future: First Nations, Inuit, & Métis Population and Public Health.