Burnett relies on Lux and other historians for her oral
history, attributing this to her significant difficulties in gaining access to
sources due to current controversies over residential schools. Her focus on a
single treaty area avoids some of the repetition that occurs throughout Lux’s
work; it also makes her monograph more persuasive and coherent, in my opinion. As
Lux focuses on the role of constructions of race and class in providing medical
care, thus offering less treatment of gender relations and the role of women,
reading these texts together is valuable.
Both Burnett and Lux offer allude to the current situation
of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. Burnett’s difficulties in obtaining sources,
particularly relating to residential schools, is particularly relevant for
beginning researchers, as the apprehension of churches to open their archives
and risk further condemnation is not unlikely to continue. Lux concludes by
urging self-determination, pointing out that despite the challenges faced by
current Aboriginal leaders, they cannot do worse than Euro-Canadian bureaucrats
already had.[1]
I was struck by the extent to which authorities experimented
on Aboriginal adults and children in institutional settings, ranging from the
often deadly “social experiment” of residential schools to the ethically
circumspect BCG trials. Many elders alleged that people were subject to
experiments during hospital stays, bolstering the reputation of hospitals as
places of death and suffering.[2]
This reminded me of the experimentation on children with disabilities in the
Provincial Training School in Red Deer, Alberta, later in the twentieth century,[3]
showing a long-ranging trend in using institutions as a venue for unethical
experiments on marginalized people.
Peculiarly, while both authors comment on women’s and men’s
roles as healers, and women’s roles as patients, there is little discussion of
Aboriginal men as patients, either in traditional healing or Euro-Canadian
hospitals. How is the role of the patient gendered in the relationship between
settlers and Aboriginal peoples on the prairies?
In both monographs, Aboriginal history is framed and
practiced very differently from, for example, Carlson’s work. Where Carlson’s
text can be accurately described as an indigenous history, despite being
produced by an historian of Euro-Canadian origin, both Lux and Burnett focus on
the impacts of colonization, such that their works are narrated in terms of
contact between Aboriginal peoples and Europeans. Neither is written with the
explicit self-consciousness that pervades Carlson’s work. That said, both
authors consider Aboriginal agency in their analyses, with Burnett particularly
showing an extent of reciprocal relationships between Aboriginal women and
settlers, and Lux noting resistance to Euro-Canadian medical regimes through
the persistence of ceremonial dances, incorporation, and petitions to
authorities. Incorporation was clearly practiced by Aboriginal peoples on the
prairies, who used Euro-Canadian medicines in culturally specific ways due to
difficulties in obtaining their own medication; Lux indicates that this was of
great concern to doctors.[4]
Notably, while incorporation enabled Nisga’a peoples in British Columbia to
minimize disruption to their culture from Euro-Canadian medical infrastructure,[5]
this was not the case for Aboriginal communities on the prairies, for whom
Euro-Canadian economic and medical intervention was far more damaging and
intrusive.
Both monographs show themes in the provision of medical care
that were also apparent in mid-northern Ontario during the same approximate
period, fueling my speculation that the economic and religious goals
highlighted by Burnett and Lux were likely widespread nationally, though Euro-Canadian
concern and the related medical infrastructure—or, in some cases, the lack
thereof—was more prominent in areas with a denser Aboriginal population.
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