Reading Analysis #2: Embodied Citizenship- Indigenous Health

The readings that were assigned for the week dealt with the broad topic of “Embodied Citizenship”, with a more narrowed focus on “Indigenous Health”. Each article that was assigned pertained to the topic of “Indigenous Health”, however, each article had certain focuses within Indigenous health, such as, tuberculosis, health experimentation on indigenous children, nutrition, and many more other focuses throughout the articles.

In Mary Ellen Kelm’s article “The Impact of Colonization on Aboriginal Health in British Columbia”, she discusses tuberculosis and how detrimental this illness was to the Aboriginal population and there was also fears of the illness infecting other populations of people. “Officials worried particularly about tuberculosis both because so many Native people died of it and because these same people seemed to pose a health threat to the rest of the population”[1]. Tuberculosis was a disease that “cast the longest shadow [and] among the First Nations, the disease took mostly young people… in 1935, over 80 percent of its victims in British Columbian Aboriginal communities were under the age of thirty, 70 percent were less that twenty years old”[2]. In addition to this disease, many Aboriginal communities were plagued with other grave illnesses “such as bronchopneumonia, [which was a] significant factor in the deaths of Aboriginal children in the province”[3], whooping cough, influenza, and measles. These illnesses that were spread around Aboriginal communities was detrimental to their populations within Canada and shows important information to get a better understanding of health within these communities and overall in Canada and how effecting illnesses can be to populations.

Still looking at illnesses within the Aboriginal population, Maureen Lux’s article, “Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920-1950s”, she looks at the illness of tuberculosis, and how careless Aboriginal peoples seemed to be regarding their health. Lux notes that there were many hospitals that were constructed to house Aboriginal peoples as they were not welcome in provincial hospitals because “Aboriginal bodies were seen as a menace to their neighbours and a danger to the nation”[4] and these racial segregated hospitals help alleviate this perceived danger to Canada. With the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis through Aboriginal communities, these hospitals establish and ran by the government was limited and not as efficient and effective as hospitals for non-Aboriginal people. “Many, like the converted 500-bed Camsell Hospital, were decommissioned military barracks, others were renovated residential schools”[5], and “modern hospitals with the state’s aid produced and reproduced racialized lines of exclusion; it became normal and natural that effective health care was reserved for white citizens”[6]. This article shows us how health within Aboriginal communities was greatly affected by the views of the white population, and how because of their illnesses and their outlook of being a danger to the rest of the white production in Canada, they needed to be segregated and evidently taken away from good health care and resources which would have vastly influenced their health.

Continuing on with the topic of Indigenous health, an article written by Ian Mosby, “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952”, looks at the experiments done and nutrition intake of Aboriginal peoples. It is noted that hunger and malnutrition was a key factor that effected Aboriginals’ health, and some reasons for this are “steadily declining populations of fur-bearing and food animals… [possibly] a product of declining incomes”[7], amongst other factors. As for experimentation within communities and schools, many of the studies found that the foods students ate in the schools were “lacking in vitamins A, B, and C and iodine because they were not being provided with enough foods like milk, fruit, vegetables, eggs, cheese, and iodized salt”[8]. This article shows the lack of healthy nutritious foods that Aboriginal people in communities and residential schools were not getting and how in the long run it greatly effected their health resulting in severe hunger and malnutrition. This article highlights the importance of nutrition to health in not just Aboriginal peoples but every population in Canada.

Lastly, in Mary Jane Logan McCallum’s article, “Starvation, Experimentation, Segregation, and Trauma: Words for Reading Indigenous Health History”, she highlights important writers, such as; Mary Ellen Kelm, Maureen Lux, and Ian Mosby, and how their works on Indigenous health, is key to understanding the effects health has within an Indigenous population. McCallum looks at how starvation, experimentation, segregation, and overall trauma all influence Indigenous health. It is noted that “starvation not only led directly to death but also contributed to high mortality rates from diseases like tuberculosis”[9]. Experimentation on the Indigenous population and segregation, both “racial segregation and the administration of, and access to, health services”[10] greatly effected the health care and overall heath of the Indigenous. Also, “historical trauma has become a significant tool for identifying and theorizing the impact of colonization on Indigenous health”[11]. McCallum’s article showcases important factors that influences the health of the Indigenous peoples and helps us to get a better understanding of the effects of these influences on their health.

All four of these articles discuss the topic of health in schools. The first article discussed illnesses such as tuberculosis and how harmful it was to the population. The second article looked at inadequate hospital facilities and health care provided for the Indigenous peoples. In the third article, it explained experimentation and the need for proper nutrition amongst the population. Finally, the fourth article drew on ideas from the previous three articles, such as, starvation, segregation, and experimentation, which were important points to note when trying to understand Indigenous health. These articles discussed some similar topics but also different, however, they all still related back to the main topic of Indigenous health, and give us a better understanding of health in Canadian history.

 

Endnotes:

[1] Mary Ellen Kelm, “The Impact of Colonization on Aboriginal Health in British Columbia,” In Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia, 1900-1950, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998, 3.

[2] Ibid., 10.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Maureen Lux, “‘Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920-1950s,” Canadian Historical Review, 91, 3 (2010): 407.

[5] Ibid., 408.

[6] Ibid., 419.

[7] Ian Mosby, “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952,” Histoire sociale/Social History, XLVI, No. 91 (Mai/May 2013): 149.

[8] Ibid., 162.

[9] Mary Jane McCallum, “Starvation, Experimentation, Segregation, and Trauma: Words for Reading Indigenous Health History,” The Canadian Historical Review, 98, 1 (March 2017): 101.

[10] Ibid., 105.

[11] Ibid., 108.

 

Bibliography:

Kelm, Mary Ellen. “The Impact of Colonization on Aboriginal Health in British Columbia.” In Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia, 1900-1950, Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998.

Lux, Maureen. “‘Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920-1950s.” Canadian Historical Review, 91, 3 (2010): 407-434.

McCallum, Mary Jane, “Starvation, Experimentation, Segregation, and Trauma: Words for Reading Indigenous Health History.” The Canadian Historical Review, 98, 1 (March 2017): 96-113.

Mosby, Ian. “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952.” Histoire sociale/Social History, XLVI, No. 91 (Mai/May 2013): 615-642.

 

Reflection:

I decided to incorporate this reading analysis into my ePortfolio because it touched on how medical experts or people who believed themselves to be experts in the field of medicine and diagnosis of the Indigenous people’s health and illnesses they may have had such as Tuberculosis. It is evident to see that experts, which were primarily white males, enforced their medical expertise on the Indigenous population in terms of their health views and ways that would benefit the Indigenous people’s health. Medical experts believed their ways of health and how to keep the population healthy was the best way to do so. These experts put Indigenous peoples into segregated, isolated areas/hospitals/etc for the better of their health. However, even though in some instances medical experts tried to help the Indigenous peoples in a positive way by trying to help with disease and illnesses such as Tuberculosis, there was also some negative aspects to this. An example of this would be Residential Schools and how experts tried to help with health in these schools, however, it was far from a good form of heath and way of healthy living. In addition to medical experts, the other aspect of my argument of this ePortfolio is gendered roles in the medical field, and this would be primarily white males making and enforcing the health rules and changes to the Indigenous population. Overall, I found this reading analysis to be a good addition to my ePortfolio because it discussed the points I wanted to focus on in my argument.