For Nursing Week, Nunavut Arctic College honours the late Nowyah Williams

Nowyah Williams graduates from the Registered Nursing Assistant course at the Civic Hospital in Ottawa in the early 1970s. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NAC)

During Nursing Week, Nunavut Arctic College is honouring Nowyah Williams, who died recently at the age of 60.

“For Nursing Week 2013, Nursing and Health Sciences at Nunavut Arctic College salute Nowyah Williams as a life-long learner in the health professions in Nunavut and honour her services to the people of Nunavut,” said a May 6 NAC statement.

Williams, who was the manager of maternal care at the Rankin Inlet Birth Centre, contributed to the establishment of the birthing centre in Rankin Inlet and the development of the college’s maternity care and midwifery programs.

Williams was also among the elders who contributed her stories to the book, “Birth on the Land: Memories of Inuit Elders and Traditional Midwives” by Bev O’Brien.

In Inuktitut Magazine in 1972, Williams talked about her pride in completing the Registered Nursing Assistant course at the Civic Hospital in Ottawa.

Williams said she worked hard at all her science courses and to learn clinical aspects on the hospital wards.

Her dream after graduation was to: “return to Coral Harbour and help my people.”

Williams also became a spokesperson for the need for Inuit women to once again give birth closer to home.

During the 2007 Inuit Nunaat midwifery gathering in Iqaluit, described what she called the effect of forced evacuations on Inuit women.

She recalled how Inuit women were away from their families for so long to give birth that when they returned, their husbands had been unfaithful, their homes were a mess and their children estranged.

Inuit women were told that it was too dangerous to give birth in their home communities.

Women cried so many tears for their people during those forced evacuations, she said.

At the first convocation of NAC midwifery students in November 2008, Williams received an honourary diploma in midwifery for her contributions to the maternity care and midwifery programs and to the advancement of that profession in Nunavut.

During Nursing Week, the Government of Nunavut also recognized three nurses who work in the territory: Joanne Dignard, nurse-in-charge in Grise Fiord, Candice Waddell, a registered psychiatric nurse in Cape Dorset, and Judith Clarke, community health nurse in Pond Inlet.

National Nursing Week coincides with International Nursing Day on May 12, the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, considered the founder of modern nursing.