For over a hundred years, Indigenous people have endured injustices and segregation in Canada’s Health Care system. In the book Medicine Unbundled, author Gary Geddes brings awareness to a shocking national story unfamiliar to many non Indigenous Canadians. The book includes heartbreaking interviews of Elders and their nightmares of unimaginable abuse and racism committed against Indigenous people in segregated hospitals and residential schools across Canada. In a country that prides itself on its diversity and inclusivity, the gap that lies between the rights of non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal Canadians is shocking. Looking into the future as an aboriginal nursing student and proud member of the Indigenous community, I am empowered by the
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Three different kinds of racial discrimination experienced by Canada’s Indigenous population are individual, institutional, and epistemic. To begin, individual discrimination refers to the behaviour of individual members of one race/ ethnic/gender group that is intended to have a differential and or harmful effect on the members of another race/ethnic/gender group (Pincus, 1994). It is an individual's racist assumptions, beliefs or behaviours and a form of racial discrimination that stems from the conscious and unconscious (Henry & Tator, 2006). For hundreds of years, the Indigenous community has endured acts of individual racism being viewed as savages, mentally inferior, abusive, violent, drunk, and untrustworthy. In Geddes book, he shares memories of Indigenous patients who faced this kind of discrimination in Indian hospitals across the country. One particular story of individual racism that stands out comes from Joanie Morris, a Songhess Elder. She tells Geddes that she endured racial slurs like being called a squaw by her colleagues in the Indian hospital where she worked as a nurse’s aid. She also recalls a visit to the doctor …show more content…
Institutional discrimination differs from individual discrimination because the discriminatory behaviour is set in social institutions like hospitals and schools. Institutional racism is made up of the rules, procedures and practices that deliberately prevent minorities from having full and equal involvement in society (York U, …). To examine this we need to investigate the quality of medical treatment and care Indigenous patients received in segregated federal funded Indian hospitals. The Indian hospitals had to run cost efficiently therefore it is not surprising that they were inadequately staffed. The hospitals were not intended to aid Indigenous people; rather they were established to segregate them from the white society. Furthermore, these Indian hospitals were fueled by economic and political systems that performed dangerous experimental treatments for tuberculosis, shock therapy, and forced sterilizations by poorly trained health care workers all fueled by economic and political systems (Geddes, 2017). The Elder Joan Morris explained how experimental treatment for tuberculosis at Charles Camsell Hospital was a near death sentence. This unnecessary primitive experimental procedure involved permanently collapsing a lung and removing ribs often resulting in death or badly disfigured survivors (Geddes, 2017). Another story profiles Kim Recalma-Clutesi whom
Three different kinds of racial discrimination experienced by Canada’s Indigenous population are individual, institutional, and epistemic. To begin, individual discrimination refers to the behaviour of individual members of one race/ ethnic/gender group that is intended to have a differential and or harmful effect on the members of another race/ethnic/gender group (Pincus, 1994). It is an individual's racist assumptions, beliefs or behaviours and a form of racial discrimination that stems from the conscious and unconscious (Henry & Tator, 2006). For hundreds of years, the Indigenous community has endured acts of individual racism being viewed as savages, mentally inferior, abusive, violent, drunk, and untrustworthy. In Geddes book, he shares memories of Indigenous patients who faced this kind of discrimination in Indian hospitals across the country. One particular story of individual racism that stands out comes from Joanie Morris, a Songhess Elder. She tells Geddes that she endured racial slurs like being called a squaw by her colleagues in the Indian hospital where she worked as a nurse’s aid. She also recalls a visit to the doctor …show more content…
Institutional discrimination differs from individual discrimination because the discriminatory behaviour is set in social institutions like hospitals and schools. Institutional racism is made up of the rules, procedures and practices that deliberately prevent minorities from having full and equal involvement in society (York U, …). To examine this we need to investigate the quality of medical treatment and care Indigenous patients received in segregated federal funded Indian hospitals. The Indian hospitals had to run cost efficiently therefore it is not surprising that they were inadequately staffed. The hospitals were not intended to aid Indigenous people; rather they were established to segregate them from the white society. Furthermore, these Indian hospitals were fueled by economic and political systems that performed dangerous experimental treatments for tuberculosis, shock therapy, and forced sterilizations by poorly trained health care workers all fueled by economic and political systems (Geddes, 2017). The Elder Joan Morris explained how experimental treatment for tuberculosis at Charles Camsell Hospital was a near death sentence. This unnecessary primitive experimental procedure involved permanently collapsing a lung and removing ribs often resulting in death or badly disfigured survivors (Geddes, 2017). Another story profiles Kim Recalma-Clutesi whom