What is the history of 'Indian hospitals' in Canada?

Описание: Maureen Lux
Professor, History
Faculty of Humanities

Indian hospitals in Canada were institutions that were owned and operated by the federal government for Indigenous people, in particular those who came under the purview of the Indian Act and were called “Status Indians.” Indian hospitals operated from about 1920s to the 1980s. Indigenous people in the west and in the north, the Inuit, were presumed to have much higher rate of tuberculosis and so these institutions were established for them.

The kinds of medical care available in Indian hospitals was often substandard in that the Indian health service that operated the hospitals consistently paid nurses and physicians lower wages that could be earned elsewhere. Indigenous patients were being kept for the full year of their drug treatment, they were institutionalized for the full year, whereas non-Indigenous patients would have taken their medications on an outpatient basis. Indigenous people weren’t seen as capable of undertaking the often years-long treatment. Many Indigenous patients underwent invasive chest surgery where, in order to remove parts of their lungs, surgeons had to remove ribs, which made for very disfiguring surgery. The thinking was they could cut away every last bit of tuberculosis and then, when patients returned to their overcrowded houses, they wouldn’t reactivate their tuberculosis. So, it’s a medical decision, this chest surgery, but it’s also very much an economic and political decision.

One of the calls for action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that Canadians learn their history. Indian hospitals are a part of that history.

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