June 21 is National Indigenous Peoples Day. This year marks its 30th. It lands on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, when First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities across Canada celebrate their cultures, languages, and traditions.
For us, the day is also a reminder of why we do this work. Good oral care shouldn’t depend on a postal code or whether there’s a clinic nearby. For a lot of people in this country, it does.
When the nearest clinic is a flight away
In a city, a dental visit is a short drive. In many remote and rural communities, it isn’t. The nearest hygienist can be hours away by road, and sometimes there is no road at all — just a small plane and a seasonal schedule. When care is that far out of reach, it gets put off. Small problems that a routine cleaning would catch turn into painful ones.
That gap is the whole reason our founder, Hwanhee, started getting on planes.
Care that travels
She packs the portable chairs, the lights, and the tools, boards a small plane, and sets up inside a community space far from the nearest clinic. Free and low-cost dental hygiene for whoever comes through the door. Children in the chair for the first time. Parents. Elders.
No long drive to a city. No upfront cost. Just a clean, comfortable visit, brought to where people already are.
There’s a reason we’re called Aviator.
The same care, wherever the chair is
The cleaning people get on those trips is the same cleaning we give at every appointment. We use Guided Biofilm Therapy — a gentle, no-scrape method built around a warm jet of water and ultra-fine powder instead of metal scraping. It is calmer for nervous first-timers and kinder on sensitive mouths, which matters a lot when you are meeting someone who may not have seen a hygienist in years.
A first dental visit shapes how a person feels about every one after it. Making that visit calm — wherever it happens — is the point.
Honouring the day, all year
We’re proud to play a part, and we know it’s a small one. Access to care in Indigenous communities is a much bigger story than one hygienist with a travel kit, and the people who live it know it far better than we do. So we keep showing up, keep listening, and keep learning.
National Indigenous Peoples Day is a good moment to say it out loud. But the commitment isn’t a single day on the calendar. It’s the next flight, and the one after that.
Closer to home
We bring the same care to our three clinics every day. If you’re in Burnaby, Langley, or Vancouver, we’d love to look after your smile too.
Hwanhee Kim, RDH, is the founder of Aviator Dental Hygiene. The Aviator team provides care across three independent dental hygiene clinics in Burnaby, Langley, and Vancouver, where Guided Biofilm Therapy (GBT) is the standard protocol for every appointment.
