Hutterite leader says identifying outbreaks sparks discrimination
A Manitoba Hutterite minister is telling the province to stop identifying colonies where members have tested positive for COVID-19 because it is leading to stigmatization.
Paul Waldner of the CanAm Hutterite Colony in southwest Manitoba sent a letter to Premier Brian Pallister and Health Minister Cameron Friesen saying that if the practice was not stopped, he would file a human rights complaint. The correspondence was also sent to media outlets.
“Should the announcements continue, we expect the stigmatization and associated cultural and religious profiling, will only worsen,” Waldner wrote.
Manitoba chief public health officer Brent Roussin said the government has a right to identify clusters and it has not specifically named communities.
There have been reports of discrimination against Hutterites after outbreaks in multiple colonies in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The Hutterian Safety Council COVID-19 Task Force, a volunteer group of spiritual leaders, first responders and educators, said Thursday in a news release that there are more than 120 Hutterite communities in Manitoba and only five communities have active cases. There were 35 cases in Manitoba linked to Hutterite colonies as of Wednesday.
There were 43 new cases announced in Saskatchewan on Wednesday in a single colony. There are 17 Hutterite communities in that province with active cases.
Many are believed to be linked to a funeral in southern Alberta recently for three teens who drowned last month. The cases in Manitoba have not been linked to the funeral, but are connected to travel between the provinces.
The Hutterite way of life may make colonies vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19, but it also makes them adaptable to stopping it, said John Lehr, a senior scholar at the University of Winnipeg.
Hutterites are fully communal, Anabaptist communities that originated in the 16th century. There are about 50,000 members in more than 520 colonies in Canada and the United States.
Lehr, who co-authored a book on Hutterites and researched the communities for decades, said “they are just ordinary people who happen to live and dress a little differently than the rest of us.” The colony is seen as an arc of “Christian righteousness which is adrift in a secular sea of potential sin.”
“For that reason, they tend to keep to themselves,” Lehr said.
Hutterites are community minded, he said.
At the beginning of the pandemic many Hutterite colonies sewed masks and distributed them for free, supplied food, and provided other supports as needed.