Indigenous ‘health care’ exposed in searing investigation

Medicine Unbundled: A Journey Through the Minefields Of Indigenous Health Care By Gary Geddes Heritage House Publishing

The poet and the indigenous survivor are sitting at a restaurant table, painfully going over a history of atrocities — photographs that record part of Canada’s scandalous treatment of the indigenous people who were long-term residents of this continent before the poet’s European ancestors arrived. The survivor, Joan Morris, is showing the poet, Gary Geddes, more than 100 black and white photos connected with the 17 years her mother spent in the Nanaimo Indian Hospital and the time she herself spent at the same institution.

If you don’t know that for over 100 years Canada maintained segregated “health” facilities for First Nations people, or that those so called hospitals were involved in dangerous medical experiments, forced sterilizations and other forms of abuse committed against their indigenous patients, you are not alone. The history of these apartheid-like institutions is little known among non-indigenous Canadians, although the searing memories of the damage done in these institutions continue to haunt survivors like Joan Morris, the elder who had asked Geddes, whom she met at a 2012 hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to write about what he calls “the minefields of indigenous health care.”

Geddes gives a passionate and persuasive account of the devas- tating impacts of Canadian government policies on the lives and health of this nation’s first peoples.

His book records his interviews with native elders across Canada who survived the schools and hospitals. He meets with activists who are fighting to re-establish the use of traditional foods and medicines to enhance health and of healing circles, sweat lodges and other rituals to promote healing.

His account is moving, and energized by his keen poet’s eye that captures details of landscape, architecture and human gesture.

In this book, Geddes, who has also written about similar issues in Africa, challenges non-indigenous Canadians to face, at long last, the violence and injustice that has been done in our name against our indigenous neighbours. First Nations activists have fought hard to make this record of injustice visible, and we non-natives, Geddes argues, bear a moral responsibility to act for reconciliation and healing in the face of what has been revealed.

This book deserves to be widely read, and should be acted upon boldly. Anyone who cares about human decency and social justice owes a debt to Gary Geddes and to his indigenous informants. We can no longer pretend we don’t know about residential schools, murdered and missing aboriginal women and “Indian Hospitals.” The only outstanding question is how we respond.

A book launch and discussion on segregated Indigenous health care in Canada with Gary Geddes and Joan Morris will be held February 15 at noon in the sty-Wet-tan hall of the First Nations longhouse at 1985 West Mall, at the University of British Columbia. Tom Sandborn lives and writes on unceded First Nations land in Vancouver. He welcomes feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net