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The Meno-Ya-Win Health Center
The Meno-Ya-Win Health Center was completed in 2010; commissioned by the Sioux Lookout First Nation Health Authority. The rationale behind the hospital's creation was to deliver a new holistic approach to health care in Canada. Menoyawin is an Anishinaabe word that connotes health, wellness, well-being and individual spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical wholeness. Meno Ya Win Health Centre's CEO Roger Waller and his Board of Directors had the vision to combine traditional first nations healing practices with the most up-to-date modern medical facilities. Thus they commissioned architects Douglas Cardinal and Murphy Hilger to design the health center. As one of the architects, Douglas Cardinal uses the spiritual connection with his native culture to influence his work. Many theoretical ideas of indigenous history include its respect and sensibility towards nature, humans' inseparable relationship with the environment and land. These concepts resulted in his use of natural materials, organic shapes, soil and sun studies, and creating spaces that move people spiritually and make them appreciative of their surroundings.

Town History
The hospital attracts many patients each year and offers care to many of the surrounding Aboriginal populations. This building has taken part in a rich history of healthcare in Sioux Lookout. The global influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 forced the townspeople to turn homes, schools, and churches into hospitals to care for the sick. In 1920, a tragic rail accident occurred just outside of the community. Three badly injured railwaymen were brought to the town where they died on the station platform waiting for Winnipeg's transportation. Immediately following this tragedy, a committee was formed to build a hospital.

Design Influences
The Meno-Ya-Win Health Center offers a wide variety of basic and advanced resources along the spectrum of primary health care. This includes diabetic care, stroke prevention, mental health therapy and addictions, and acute and outpatient programs. The principal concept behind the master plan was a circular path, 350 meters in diameter, cut through the forest and providing access to each building on the campus. This path represents the Medicine Wheel, a concept shared by many Indigenous cultures, that signifies the importance of appreciation and respecting the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of all things. The design process of the health center included community engagement. Throughout his early years, Douglas Cardinal dealt with racism and societal ideas of conformity for both his lifestyle and architecture. Douglas Cardinal's unique architectural process begins with a Vision Session that allows the client to examine all space use components by researching the empiric, functional, emotional, and spiritual needs of the building.

Building Design
The cultural reasoning behind the layout, such as how the proposal opens to the four cardinal directions, embracing all peoples and societies. The medical complex is built to show the medical wheel's design so that patients arriving by air can already see the symbols of healing. The main gathering space is a heavy timber structure, oriented east, towards sunrise. Sunlight fills the room through a large octagonal skylight, and below that is a central 'fireplace' built-in tempered glass, lit with LEDs and circled by red pipestone. The Ceremonial Room was designed for ceremonies and healing rituals that utilize the medicine wheel's elemental form. The firepit in this room is built into the ground and bordered by natural stone and clads of cedar. The Ambulatory Lobby widens in the middle while narrowing as one walks each way, giving a canoe shape and is built-in structural timber with a clerestory window, flooding the space with natural light. The flooring pattern also suggests the movement of water. Throughout the inpatient wing, long window walls provide a view of the vast landscape. The Medicine Wheel's circular pattern is also present in the cubicle curtains and floor pattern throughout the hospital as a metaphor for healing. Therefore, by integrating symbols from Aboriginal cultures such as the Medicine Wheel and the primordial elements into the design, the hospital resonates with patients and the local community as a healing place.