In her novel, Separate Beds, Maureen Lux dives into the history of the so-called ‘Indian Hospitals’ through an extensive description of the initial creation of these hospitals, as well as the plight of Indigenous people concerning these hospitals throughout the 1920’s-1980’s in Canada. She provides an overview of this often-ignored part of Canadian history by examining it in detail, revealing unfortunate truths and forgotten events which impacted the resulting treatment of Canada’s indigenous population then and today. This analysis will strive to overview Lux’s in-depth description of Canadian history and the main arguments that she makes surrounding the experience of Indigenous Canadians and health care.
Lux begins by describing the shift in health care to address the growing problem of disease on reserves and the perceived threat of sick ‘Indians’ to other Canadians (Lux, 2016). Long before separate “Indian hospitals” were created, most health care institutions made use of isolated wings to house the non-white patients (Lux, 2016). “Indian wings” were increasingly utilized until the public argued that these patients should not even be housed in the same buildings, for risk of contamination to the white Canadians who were cared for at the same locations (Lux, 2016, p. 21). Beginning in the 1920’s, the government reluctantly agreed to create Indian hospitals, yet refused to pay for the care needed at any more than the bare minimum; meaning that aboriginal communities would have to fund these hospitals themselves (Lux, 2016). And thus began the decades long struggle between the Aboriginal communities and the government agencies to determine who should take responsibility for and ultimately pay for ‘Indian’ health care.
Lux gives several examples of the attempts and failures to achieve a successfully run ‘Indian’ hospital. These not only promised to solve the problem of isolating ‘Indian tuberculosis’, but also claimed to include the best doctors, treatments and success rates (Lux, 2016, p. 53). One of these was the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital, which officially opened under this new guise in 1946. Initially claiming to be one of the best and largest ‘Indian’ hospitals at the time, this soon was proven to be false (Lux, 2016, p. 54). The reality inside this hospital was that soon after its opening, the hospital became overcrowded, resources were dwindling and the building itself was in poor condition (Lux, 2016). The story of this ‘Indian’ hospital was not an uncommon one at the time and Maureen Lux uses the unfortunate number of similar examples to paint a picture of promise unfulfilled. In the first few chapters of her novel, she uses this history of the creation of ‘Indian’ hospitals to deliver her argument that the government used ‘Indian’ hospitals as a method of control to confine and assimilate the Aboriginal population in Canada (Lux, 2016). These supposed humanitarian efforts amounted to little more than a trap to force the assimilation of Indigenous peoples into mainstream canadian society, yet keep them in their place at the lowest rung of the ladder of citizens (Lux, 2016, p. 93). She goes on to portray the efforts of Aboriginal communities to hold onto their treaty rights and fight the increasing constraints put in place by the Indian Health Service (IHS) and the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA).
Once Lux explains the creation of ‘Indian’ hospitals and the hardships that came along with it, she moves on to depict the conditions within these hospitals and the constant fight between the staff, patients, communities and government which ultimately prevented any meaningful health care from being administered (Lux, 2016). From the descriptions she provides, the conditions within these hospitals sound more similar to those of a prison than to an institution which is supposed to protect and care for its patients. One example is how Aboriginal patients, even children, were treated as prisoners, unable to leave the hospital until they were told they were allowed (Lux, 2016). Staff even went so far as to physically restrain children who they said needed to learn discipline. Young children were tied to their bed, however, many learned how to free themselves from these constraints. They were subsequently forced to wear leg casts that prevented them from moving or walking. At Fort Qu’Appelle children were even put in straightjackets when they were disobedient (Lux, 2016, p. 105). Harsh treatment like this continued for many years for children and adults. Fed up with their hospitals’ conditions, many Inuit patients began writing letters to the administrators, hoping to get in contact with their loved ones and ask for help with their situation (Lux, 2016, p. 106). Unfortunately, their concerns were largely unheard and the hospital environments only got worse (Lux, 2016).
The author then depicts the unfortunate turn of events as the patients’ lives and experiences were used by the government to portray a false image of what it was like to live in an ‘Indian’ hospital (Lux, 2016, p. 129). Despite the loud cries from Aboriginal patients that they were suffering at these hospitals, positive images and stories were curated to support the narrative that the government was doing great humanitarian work and that even the “Indian problem” could be cured (Lux, 2016). Many patients were angered that their words and stories were used against them, as “propaganda” used to assure Canadians that all was well inside ‘Indian’ hospitals (Lux, 2016, p. 129). This was far from the truth. Lux argues that by “pathologizing Aboriginality” and showing that it can be cured and controlled, the Canadian government effectively achieved their goal of assimilation of ‘Indians’ into white society (Lux, 2016, p. 129). Despite this, Lux argues, by continuing to provide free health care to Indigenous peoples, regardless of the pretence or consequence, what the government agencies did not realize is that they were paving the way for Aboriginal communities to continue to demand their Treaty Six rights to health care (Lux, 2016, p. 129).
In the later chapters in her novel, Maureen focuses on the change from a fight for who will fund and run the ‘Indian’ hospitals, to a fight concerning whether they will be shut down. Aboriginal communities fought back in the early 1960’s as the Indian Health Service began talks about “getting out of the hospital business” (Lux, 2016, p. 130). Lux points out how at that time, the rates of admissions to these hospitals were declining; which may have been used as reasoning to shut them down. In addition to this, though, the conditions within the hospitals were also seriously declining, and their closure may have been an acknowledgement of these serious flaws (Lux, 2016). As hospitals began to close because of the lack of funding from the government and refusal from Indigenous peoples to spend their limited resources on something they believed was their fundamental right, reserve community members began to fight back and demand that they receive the health care they deserve (Lux, 2016). The Native communities argued that the policies such as the “Health Plan for Indians” put in place to encourage “native self-determination” and essentially required Aboriginal people to provide their own health care if the provinces couldn’t, was simply a ploy to appear generous while leaving the most vulnerable to suffer (Lux, 2016, p. 153). Year after year, the needs of white Canadians were prioritized and Indigenous people were given no option but to assimilate or suffer (Lux, 2016). As Lux makes clear, Aboriginal communities refused to accept this fate and continued to demand their treaty right to better health care (Lux, 2016, p. 160).
Separate Beds ends off with a blatant declaration by Lux that demonstrates the decades it took for the Indigenous communities in Canada to fight for better care from various government agencies. Despite the IHS and the DIA’s various efforts to isolate Aboriginal people using government policies and severe mistreatment, Indigenous communities were able to achieve their goals in some situations (Lux, 2016). One example of this was when the IHS tried to close the North Battleford Indian Hospital, through negotiations with the province and the Notre Dame Hospital. Once the community found out about this plan, they began to resist (Lux, 2016, p. 165). After a push back and forth, with committees created to determine the conditions within and usefulness of the hospital, a report by a special task force stating that the ‘Indians’ essentially did have a right to federally funded health care (Lux, 2016, p. 183), and a recommendation by a health care consultant (Lux, 2016, p. 185), results were finally attained. While not exactly what the Aboriginal communities had hoped, the resulting creation of an ‘Indian Health Centre’ in 1979 was a pretty clear win for the reserve communities (Lux, 2016).
As Lux declares, the ‘Indian Health Centre’ was and is lasting proof of, “the Aboriginal community’s insistence that health services and the treaty relationship would not be severed” (Lux, 2016, p. 187). She argues that the lengths the Canadian government went to, to silence the Aboriginal community and to segregate and then assimilate them, is a true testament to just how little the rest of society thought of them (Lux, 2016). Once again, the bureaucracy that comes along with such human rights as health care, proves that the implemented policies worked towards the governments’ larger goal to treat and cure Aboriginality (Lux, 2016, p. 190); also known as the “Indian problem” (Lux, 2016, p. 3).
Maureen Lux’s critical analysis of the history of health care for Indigenous Canadians portrays the harm caused by Colonization and the unmatched strength of Aboriginal communities to compel the government to finally acknowledge its commitment to health care (Lux, 2016, p. 197). Lux believes that this history of “separate beds” is one that finally sheds light on what truly occurred at a time when national health care was established and Canada was praised for this (Lux, 2016, p. 130). Behind all the hype about a humanitarian centered government, was racial discrimination, abuse of power and a legacy of cultural genocide (Lux, 2016). This legacy is one that is still remembered to this day and is one that has changed the lives of Indigenous peoples for generations to come.
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