Library and Academic Services: Indigenous Health & Well-Being: Racism in Health Care

Racism in Health Care

Justice Murray Sinclair, Chairperson Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) revealed that throughout the 130-year residential school period, which ended in the 1990s, Indigenous children learned that Aboriginal cultures were inferior to those of Europeans and Christians. And at the same time, other Canadians learned the same thing. Racism against Indigenous peoples has been taught and learned. We can end the ignorance and falsehoods about our history in one generation if provincial governments ensure that all Canadian students learn about the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada. If we teach our children the truth, they can be leaders in the critically important work of ending racism and bringing about reconciliation in our country.

Nutrition, Diet and Food Security

Aboriginal Experiences with Racism and Its Impacts
This paper focuses on the lived and structural forms of racism and provides a brief overview of what racism is, how it intersects with other forms of discrimination, and how it is manifested. The paper examines how the dominant racialized group (i.e., European settlers) expresses racism in historic and current contexts and how Aboriginal people in Canada experience racism in interpersonal, structural and sometimes violent ways. Government policies, healthcare, and judicial systems are also explored for the unique ways in which racism is experienced by Aboriginal peoples and how it impacts their well-being.
First Peoples, Second Class Treatment: The Role of Racism in the Health and Well-being of Indigenous Peoples in Canada
This discussion paper explores the role of racism in the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples in Canada. It provides an overview of the historical and contemporary contexts of racism which have historically, and continue to, negatively shape the life choices and chances of Indigenous people in this country. Indigenous people experience the worst health outcomes of any population group in Canada. This alarming detail underscores the urgency and importance of understanding and addressing racism as a determinant of Indigenous health.
Racism and Public Health
Canada remains a nation where a person’s colour, religion, culture or ethnic origin* are determinants of health that result in inequities in social inclusion, economic outcomes, personal health, and access to and quality of health and social services. These effects are especially evident for racialized and Indigenous peoples as well as those at the lower end of the social gradient and those who are incarcerated (populations that are also disproportionately composed of racialized and Indigenous people). Complicating this scenario are government and non-governmental systems that impose barriers on those in need which limits their ability to obtain the services and benefits that are easily available to most Canadians. Steps must be taken to eliminate these systemic barriers.
Tubal Ligation in the Saskatoon Health Region: The Lived Experience of Aboriginal Women
This report examines the issue of Aboriginal women from Saskatoon and surrounding catchment area who have reported being coerced into having a tubal ligation in Saskatoon hospitals. The overall aim of this review is to examine the issues and provide recommendations or ‘Calls to Action’ to the Saskatoon Health Region to prevent the coercion of Aboriginal women into tubal ligation. The report provides an historical colonization-impacted context Aboriginal of women’s lives, as well as the history of forced sterilization in Canada.
Out of Sight: A Summary of the Events Leading up to Brian Sinclair’s Death and the Inquest That Examined It and the Interim Recommendations of the Brian Sinclair Working Group
This summary is part of the ongoing work of the Brian Sinclair Working Group (the “Working Group”). It is being released with draft recommendations aimed at addressing racism within the healthcare system and improving the care of Indigenous patients. The Working Group was formed to examine the role of racism in the death of Brian Sinclair and in the inquest that followed, in order to highlight ongoing structural and systemic anti-Indigenous racism in our contemporary health and legal systems.

Library Resources

An Act of Genocide : Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women by Karen Stote
Location: E 98 .W8 S768 2016 (Located at NDC)
This book unpacks long burying archival evidence to begin documenting the forced sterilization of Aboriginal women in Canada. Grounding this evidence within the context of colonialism, the oppression of women and the denial of Indigneous sovereignty, Karen Stote argues that this coercive sterilization must be considered in relation to the larger goals of Indian policy - to gain access to Indigenous lands and resources while reducing the numbers of those to whom the federal government has obligations.
Race and Racialization: Essential Readings by Tania Das Gupta
Location: HT 1521 .R235 2018 (Located at NDC)
This second edition is an anthology of both classic and contemporary writings on race, racialization, racism, and colonialism and their intersections with indigeneity, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. It offers historical, comparative, and international perspectives and features 23 new chapters and a whole new section on state multiculturalism. Edited as a theoretically strong, cohesive whole, this book unites an ensemble of academic and activist writers from a diversity of backgrounds. Themes of ethnocentrism, multiculturalism, biculturalism, cultural genocide, conquest and colonization, slavery, anti-Black racism, Orientalism, migrant labour, resistance, and the social construction of race are explored.
Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City by Adele Perry; Mary Jane Logan McCallum
Location: E 78 .M25 M33 2018 (Located at NDC)
Examines an Indigenous life and death in a Canadian city, and what it reveals about the ongoing history of colonialism. At the heart of this story is a thirty-four-hour period in September 2008. During that day and half, Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-Status Anishinaabeg resident of Manitoba's capital city, arrived in the emergency room of the Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg's major downtown hospital, was left untreated and unattended to, and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection. His death reflects a particular structure of indifference born of and maintained by colonialism.

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Racism in Health Care

Justice Murray Sinclair, Chairperson Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Nutrition, Diet and Food Security

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