Embodied Citizenship – Health in Schools

This week’s readings were based on the Indigenous Health in Canada between the dates of the 1900’s to 1952. During this time there was a lot of outbreaks of diseases and illnesses that were sweeping the Aboriginal communities; some much worse than the others. These communities were put under observation during many periods so researchers could study their habits and see what they could do to help them with their illnesses. These people were left alone to have to try and survive with the little to none, medicine they made at home. “In the words of the Shuswap elder, Augusta Tappage, ‘No doctor, no help/ If your child was sick/ It had to die. That’s how it was in those days’” (Kelm, 6). Aboriginal population was suffering in ways that the Caucasian population would have never even imagined. Mosby writes in his article Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1955 about these differences. He states, “While most the (Aboriginal) people were going out and trying to make a living, they were really sick enough to be in bed under treatment and that if they were white people, they would be in bed and demanding care and medical attention” (Mosby, 146). “At this same time, however, rates of disease and death remained depressingly high – higher than in the non-Aboriginal population. Infectious diseases of all kinds, particularly tuberculosis, stalked the First Nations whose living conditions and subsistence bases were gradually eroded during this era” (Kelm, 3). Although there was a tremendous amount of diseases and illnesses that were attacking these populations the one that prevailed the most was tuberculosis. Throughout all of these studies they found out that, “The Aboriginal death rate from tuberculosis was fifteen times higher than the rate of the population as a whole in 1942” (Kelm, 9). Mosby also found, “tuberculosis (had a) death rate of 1,400 per 100,000 (compared to 27.1 for the non-Aboriginal population of Manitoba)” (147). They had little evidence to find the cause of how tuberculosis was coming into the households of these families. Although in Maureen Lux article Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920-1950’s she states, “At the same time, a 1927 survey in British Columbia implicated the schools in the spread of tuberculosis infection in children. Researchers found a clear link between bone and gland infection in residential school children and the raw milk used in the schools. They concluded that the infection could not have come from home, since few reserve families used cow’s milk” (413). These children were getting ill from just being at school, not even from being at home. They were taken away from their families under their own will and brought to a school that wasn’t aiding them in anyway, it was hindering them from the potential of a good life. The Aboriginal people were a huge part of our past and are still a huge part of our future here in Canada. The things they had to overcome to get here today are astonishing. Although we cannot undo the past that has been done against these people and the hardships they have had to overcome, we can learn and discover the Aboriginal history and teach it to future generations so that we can learn from the mistakes our ancestors and create a better future for all.