What were Indian Hospitals?
"Indian Hospitals were opened not as a genuine expression of concern on the part of the Canadian government for the health of Indigenous children, but instead to assuage fears of a percevied threat that Indigenous people posed to the non-Indigneous population. The initial purpose of these hospitals was to reduce the prevalence and spread of tuberculosis (TB). The hospitals were a method of segregation and restriction, and operated in the same way as reserves and residential schools, as a part of the larger colonial system.
The formal Indian hospital system began in the 1930s, but saw its real expansion in the post-war years of the late-1940s and into the 1950s. In the 1970s and 1980s most of the hospitals closed or were converted. At least three major Indian hospitals operated in British Columbia – at Prince Rupert (Miller Bay), Sardis (Coqualeetza), and Nanaimo.
The hospitals were chronically understaffed and the staff onsite were often undertrained and sometimes unlicensed. The hospitals were also often overcrowded. Practices such as experimental treatment, or painful and disabling surgeries were prevalent, even at a time when general hospitals where switching to less invasive treatments for TB. Although enforced hospitalization and physical restraining of patients was not permissible in a general hospital setting, they were considered common practice at Indian hospitals. There were also cases of unnecessary transportation of sick patients from one hospital to another."
From UBC's Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre.
Resources
Medicine unbundled : a journey through the minefields of Indigenous health care by Call Number: SA G43 M53 2017ISBN: 9781772031645Publication Date: 2017An investigative exploration of the separate "Indian hospitals" that existed in Canada for many decades, told through memoir, archival research, and interviews with survivors.
Healing Histories: Stories from Canada's Indian Hospitals by ISBN: 9780888648068Publication Date: 2013Healing Histories is the first detailed collection of Indigenous perspectives on the history of tuberculosis in Canada's Indigenous communities and on the federal government's Indian Health Services. Featuring oral accounts from patients, families, and workers who experienced Canada's Indian Hospital system, it presents a fresh perspective on health care history that includes the diverse voices and insights of the many people affected by tuberculosis and its treatment in the mid-twentieth century.
Separate beds: A history of Indian hospitals in Canada, 1920s-1980s by Call Number: SA L89 S47 2016ISBN: 9781442645578Publication Date: 2016Separate Beds is the shocking story of Canada's system of segregated health care. Operated by the same bureaucracy that was expanding health care opportunities for most Canadians, the 'Indian Hospitals' were underfunded, understaffed, overcrowded, and rife with coercion and medical experimentation. Established to keep the Aboriginal tuberculosis population isolated, they became a means of ensuring that other Canadians need not share access to modern hospitals with Aboriginal patients.
Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia, 1900-50 by Call Number: SAA K45 C36 1998ISBN: 9780774852333Publication Date: 1998Kelm begins by exploring the ways in which Aboriginal bodies were materially affected by Canadian Indian policy, which placed restrictions on fishing and hunting, allocated inadequate reserves, forced children into unhealthy residential schools, and criminalized indigenous healing. Kelm reveals how Aboriginal people were able to resist and alter these forces in order to preserve their own cultural understanding of their bodies, disease, and medicine.
- The Nanaimo and Charles Camsell Indian hospitals: First Nations’ narratives of health care, 1945 to 1965.by Meijer Drees, Laurie. Histoire sociale, 05/2010, Volume 43, Issue 85.
- Indian hospitals and Aboriginal nurses: Canada and Alaskaby Drees, Laurie Meijer. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 03/2010, Volume 27, Issue 1
- Colonial tuberculosis legacies and the Dynevor Indian Hospital (1908-1934)by Mant, Madeleine; Abonyi, Sylvia; Hackett, Paul. 2023
- Care for the 'Racially Careless': Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920-1950sMaureen Lux (2010). Characterized as 'racially careless' concerning their own health, Aboriginal bodies were seen as a menace to their neighbours and a danger to the nation. By the 1940s state-run racially segregated Indian hospitals institutionalized Aboriginal people who were not welcome in provincial sanatoria or in the modernizing community hospitals.
- Mistreated - CBC NewsStories from survivors of Canada's Indian Hospitals.
- 'Canadians would be shocked': Survivors, lawyers describe treatment at Nanaimo Indian HospitalAn article from CBC News investigating abuse at the Nanaimo Indian hospital.