NWT
Two nurses from the NWT have been honoured with a prestigious national award.

Lianne Mantla, centre, a nurse from Behchoko, received an award on May 12 in Ottawa from Valerie Gideon, assistant deputy minister for the First Nations and Inuit Branch with Health Canada, and Paul Glover, an associate deputy minister of Health Canada. - photo courtesy of Health Canada

Lianne Mantla of Behchoko and Rachel Munday of Aklavik are among three nurses from across Canada to win Health Canada's 12th annual First Nations and Inuit Health Branch Award of Excellence in Nursing.

The award celebrates the dedication, initiative and excellence of nurses employed by Health Canada and First Nations and Inuit communities to improve the health of aboriginal peoples.

It is presented annually during National Nursing Week, this year at a ceremony in Ottawa on May 12.

Mantla is a community health nurse at the health centre in her home community of Behchoko.

"It's nice to be recognized for an award such as this in a career as wonderful as nursing," she said.

However, Mantla, who is currently the acting nurse in charge, said she doesn't feel any more deserving of the award than many other nurses.

"I could list off a whole number of people who are probably more deserving than I am," she said.

Mantla hopes the award will help encourage other people to go into nursing as a career.

She graduated from the Northern Nursing Program at Aurora College in Yellowknife with a diploma in nursing in 2003. After working in various nursing positions, she completed a degree in nursing in 2012 from the University of Alberta, and returned to Behchoko.

According to information from Health Canada, Mantla is believed to be the only person in the Tlicho region to have completed a degree in nursing.

Health Canada also said elders are very proud of Mantla's accomplishments and knowledge of western medicine, and the fact she is so strong in her Tlicho language and culture.

"I'm fluent in my Tlicho language," she said.

Health Canada praised Mantla for her determination and high degree of independence, and for being a good role model in her community.

Rachel Munday, the other community health nurse to win the award in the NWT, said she was pleased to receive the honour.

"I know several other people who've received the award in past years, so to me it was a real honour to be placed up there with them, because they're all nurses that I have huge respect for. So to be thought of in that category for me personally was pretty exciting," she said. "But also the main impact of this award is that it recognizes not just me, but all the people who have helped me to get where I am today."

She is currently enrolled in the Nurse Practitioner Program at Aurora College in Yellowknife. When she graduates in 2015, she plans to return to Aklavik to continue to provide nursing services to her adopted community.

Munday, who is originally from England, came to Canada in 1989 and has since then worked in Aklavik, except for a year in Yellowknife in 2003 and a brief time in northwestern Ontario.

She has been the nurse in charge in Aklavik since 2005.

Munday is happy working in the North and in a First Nations community.

"Obviously, I enjoy being with the people, otherwise I wouldn't still be there," she said.

She said she grew up in a remote and isolated community, although on the other side of the world. For seven years when she was a child, her family lived on the Solomon Islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean.

"So I'm used to a different pace of life," she explained. "I'm used to different opportunities, as in healthcare isn't the same as if you live in a city next to a health sciences complex. It is the way I was brought up. So to me it's normal life."

Munday obtained her nursing diploma from a hospital-based program at Basingstoke District General Hospital in England in 1985, and then trained to become a midwife and graduated in 1987. She also completed a Masters in Midwifery in 1997 at the University of Wales.

The third winner of the Health Canada award is Alison Lynch, a community health nurse at the South Indian Lake Nursing Station in northern Manitoba.