This week’s reading focused on the way in which health is a form of embodied citizenship, specifically looking at Indigenous health. Most know that Indigenous peoples were assimilated and discriminated through public policy by enclosing children into residential schools and banning cultural practices. Furthermore, Indigenous people were out casted from society, misrepresented and assimilated through notions of health. These prescribed notions of health lead to a new vision of citizenship in Canada that was reliant on one’s ability to fit within Western norms of health in order to be seen as a decent citizen
During the time around and after the turn of the 20th century, the perceived health of Indigenous peoples was under attack. Many were dying from tuberculous, the Spanish flu, and many other forms of diseases. The increased number of deaths projected an image of poor health onto Indigenous peoples. As Mary Ellen Kelm states, “with the exception of the dreadful toll taken by infectious diseases, Aboriginal bodies were still strong”. The cancer, heart and circulatory disease were all considerably lower than the Canadian non-Aboriginal average.[i] Despite Indigenous peoples having a relatively healthy lifestyle, the people as a whole were labeled as unhealthy because of the prescribed notions of health.
The Canadian government also used health as a means of teaching Indigenous peoples the Western ideals, while disregarding traditional practices. For example, Ian Mosby discusses the forms of medical experimentation in residential schools, and how they were not just an attempt to improve dietary concerns but also to fulfill the general goal of the Residential schools, to end the “Indian Problem”. They would “lead Indian people away from their indolent habits.”[ii]
Health was also used as a means to segregate or devalue Indigenous lives. During the first half of the twentieth century, there were many medical studies done on elderly or disabled people because they were seen as a burden of society. The lives of the residential schools kids were seen in the same way, as the medical experiments illuminated that their lives were viewed as useless until rendered useful through these experiments.[iii] Similarly in the case of “Indian hospitals,” Ingenious peoples were systematically separated from the rest of the population in order to make certain that they were safe from the diseases and the unhealthiness of the Indigenous. The Indigenous bodies were viewed as a threat to the communities.[iv]
Putting these readings and their ideas into the larger context of embodied citizenship, they all assert the importance that health played in determining your worth as a citizen. Anyone that was not exactly fitting into the notions of health set up by Western ideals, were treated as non-citizens. In the case of the Indian Hospitals, Indigenous exclusion from mainstream hospitals and segregation due to safety of the regular citizens were rooted in the ways they saw Indigenous peoples health. The exclusion in medical services reveals the want to exclude the Indigenous populations from basic citizenship rights, due to their perceived “healthiness.”
In preparation for my final essay I read about a woman’s experience visiting a Hutterite colony. One of the major takeaways she learned about these people was their overall happiness with life despite a lack of material possession and a non-modern version of life. Establishing the surprisingly low number of mental health cases, where asylums were not a part of Hutterite life. The communal sense of health and well-being was vital in keeping a strong community. Looking at embodied citizenship, the Hutterites looked at health by a group standard not individual, thus making health less of a defining feature of Hutterite citizenship. This is much different than the notions brought forward in this week’s readings, where health was viewed as an individual problem. This creates a complex structure of health standards that one is evaluated on, however this is absent from a Hutterite community.[v]
Bibliography
[i] 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: 16- 17.
[ii] 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), 633..
[iii] Ibid., 637
[iv] Lux, Maureen, “‘Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920-1950s” Canadian Historical Review, 91, 3 (2010).
[v] Staebler, Edna, “The Lord Will Take Care of Us.” Maclean’s Magazine. March, 15, 1952.