Library and Academic Services: Indigenous Health & Well-Being: Getting Started

Welcome - Guide Introduction

Indigenous Health and Well-Being

This guide is to assist you in researching topics related to Indigenous health. Here you will find links to books, ebooks, journals, databases, websites, and more.

RRC Polytech campuses are located on the lands of the Anishinaabeg, Ininiwak, Anishininwak, Dakota Oyate, and Denésuline, and the National Homeland of the Red River Métis.

We recognize and honour Treaty 3 Territory Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, the source of Winnipeg’s clean drinking water. In addition, we acknowledge Treaty Territories which provide us with access to electricity we use in both our personal and professional lives.

Image credit: Morning Star by Alex Janvier

This Guide is currently under construction (updates coming Fall 2025).

Library Resources

History of Indigenous Health Care in Canada

Aboriginal Health in Canada by James B. Waldram; D. Ann Herring; T. Kue Young
Location: RA 449 .W35 2006 (Located at NDC)

Aboriginal Health in Canada discusses the complex web of physiological, psychological, spiritual, historical, sociological, cultural, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to health and disease patterns among the Aboriginal peoples of Canada.
Clearing the Plains: disease, politics of starvation, and the loss of Aboriginal life by James W. Daschuk
Location: E 78 .C2 D36 2013 (Located at NDC)

Clearing the Plains dismantles and destroys the view that Canada has a special claim to humanity in its treatment of Indigenous peoples. Daschuk shows how infectious diseases and state-supported starvation combined to create a creeping, relentless catastrophe that persists to the present day.
Healing Histories: Stories from Canada's Indian Hospitals by Laurie Meijer Drees
Location: RA 450.4 .I53 M44 2013 (Located at NDC)

Healing Histories is the first detailed collection of Aboriginal perspectives on the history of tuberculosis in Canada's indigenous communities and on the federal government's Indian Health Services. Featuring oral accounts from patients, families, and workers who experienced Canada's Indian Hospital system, it presents afresh perspective on health care history that includes the diverse voices and insights of the many people affected by tuberculosis and its treatment in the mid-twentieth century
Medicine That Walks: Disease, Medicine and Canadian Plains Native People, 1880-1940 by Maureen K. Lux
Location: E 78 .P7 L89 2001 (Located at NDC)

Biological invasion, Lux argues, was accompanied by military, cultural, and economic invasions, which, combined with the loss of the bison herds and forced settlement on reserves, led to population decline. The diseases killing the Plains people were not contagious epidemics but the grinding diseases of poverty, malnutrition, and overcrowding.
Medicine Unbundled: A Journey Through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care by Gary Geddes
Location: RA 450.4 .I53 G43 2017 (Located at NDC)

An investigative exploration of the separate "Indian hospitals" that existed in Canada for many decades, told through memoir, archival research, and interviews with survivors.
Moving Aboriginal Health Forward : Discarding Canada's Legal Barriers by Yvonne Boyer
Location: RA 450.4 .I53 B69 2014

This book is an historical examination of Canadian legal regimes and the negative impact they have had on the health of Aboriginal peoples. Everything from the early ban on traditional practices to the constitutional division of powers is examined.
Separate Beds: a history of Indian hospitals in Canada, 1920s-1980s by Maureen K. Lux
Location: RA 450.4 I53 L89 2016 (Located at NDC)

Separate Beds is the shocking story of Canada's system of segregated health care. Operated by the same bureaucracy that was expanding health care opportunities for most Canadians, the 'Indian Hospitals' were underfunded, understaffed, overcrowded, and rife with coercion and medical experimentation. Established to keep the Aboriginal tuberculosis population isolated, they became a means of ensuring that other Canadians need not share access to modern hospitals with Aboriginal patients.

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Welcome - Guide Introduction

Indigenous Health and Well-Being

Library Resources

History of Indigenous Health Care in Canada

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