Pewaseskwan Team

Dr. Alexandra King
Cameco Chair of Indigenous Health and Wellness; Associate Professor, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan
Dr. Alexandra King, MD, FRCPC, is a member of Nipissing First Nation (Ontario). Alexandra is the Cameco Chair in Indigenous Health and Wellness at the University of Saskatchewan and co-leads Pewaseskwan (the Indigenous Wellness Research Group). She supports Indigenous communities in improving health and wellness outcomes at the individual, family and community levels. Alexandra brings leadership skills in culturally safe and responsive research and care. Her work is grounded in reconciliation, etuaptmumk (Two-eyed Seeing), which brings together Indigenous and Western worldviews or forms of knowledge, and Ethical Space—which needs to be created when peoples with disparate worldviews engage with each other.
As a First Nations doctor of Internal Medicine, her practice is grounded in Indigenous philosophy, with a focus on care for HIV/AIDS, HCV and related conditions, for which First Nations, Inuit, and Métis bear a disproportionate burden. She works in Saskatoon and serves more rural and remote communities through shared models of care, such as telehealth services.
As a First Nations researcher, Alexandra is a Principal Investigator on various CIHR research grants related to Indigenous people and HIV, HCV and co-infections, and land- and culture-based health and wellness research. Other research interests include Indigenous wellness and Indigenous research ethics. She is re-visioning an Indigenous version of community-based research, so it is centred on Indigenous ancestral wisdom and lived experience, as well as Indigenous research philosophies and methodologies; similarly, she co-creates intervention research that is grounded in Indigenous epistemology, culture and wellness.
Alexandra serves on many local, national and international initiatives. She co-leads the Indigenous platform and is a member of the Equity/Diversity/Inclusion committee for the Canadian Network on Hepatitis C (CanHepC). She co-leads the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility Working Group of the CANadian Consortium of Clinical Trial TRAINing platform (CANTRAIN). She is a member of the CIHR Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health Advisory Board and the Treasurer for the Canadian Association for HIV Research (CAHR). She is co-visionary of Mitewekan (Cree, meaning the spirit behind the heartbeat), which comprises Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Holders, people with lived/living experience of health conditions and Indigenous health leaders from across Canada, as well as our allies, in guiding the Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada (CANet), the Canadian Heart Function Alliance and the Brain-Heart Interconnectome on culturally safe and responsive heart care and research.
She is also active in the USask community. She is a Sex and Gender Champion, and has supported the establishment of the Department of Indigenous Health and Wellness in the College of Medicine. She has been a member of the Active Medical Staff for the Saskatchewan Health Authority since October 2019 doing mostly out-patient medicine. She is an Internal Medicine Specialist with a focus on HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV/HCV co-infections.
She has chaired and co-chaired national and international conferences, including the Indigenous DOHaD Gathering (August 2022), the 3rd World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Viral Hepatitis (June 2022) and the 28thAnnual Canadian Conference on HIV/AIDS Research (May 2019), and served on Scientific/Organizing Committee of others, including the World Indigenous Cancer Conference (September 2019) and several CanHepC Symposia.
Alexandra also teaches Indigenous health and has mentored former and current students at undergraduate and graduate levels at both Simon Fraser University and the University of Saskatchewan, focusing on wellness intervention research with Indigenous people in the areas of land-based healing, health determinants, mental health and addictions, blood-born and sexually transmitted infections, and justice health (prisoner health).
Alexandra got her MD at the University of Toronto in 2009, completed her core internal medicine residency at the University of Alberta, and did a general internal medicine fellowship at the University of British Columbia. She also has a BSc, Honours, University of Toronto (2005) and BBA, Honours, St. Francis Xavier University (1994).
https://research-groups.usask.ca/pewaseskwan/profiles/alexandra-king.php
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Most of our team lives and works on Treaty 6 territory and the Homeland of the Métis. The original peoples of these lands are the Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, and Métis. Others are based in Vancouver, on the unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. We encourage everyone, wherever they are, to learn about the Indigenous people of the lands on which they live and work. We seek to become engaged allies together. In the spirit of truth and reconciliation, we respect the self-determination of First Nations, Métis and Inuit – in their cultures, languages and their pursuit of wellness.
© 2023 Pewaseskwan (the Indigenous Wellness Research Group) | Office of the Cameco Chair in Indigenous Health and Wellness, University of Saskatchewan.