Resources
For more resources about Indigenous tuberculosis history, visit our Publications page to see articles, videos, and podcasts by the Manitoba Indigenous Tuberculosis History Project team and news articles about the project.
Below is a curated list of resources about histories of Indigenous tuberculosis in Manitoba and in Canada. If you encounter broken links or other errors, please email tbphotos@uwinnipeg.ca.
Historical Records
Here you will find digitized archival records about Indigenous tuberculosis in Manitoba and Canada.
Archival Films
Film. Sanatorium Board of Manitoba, The Mark of Distinction, c. 1959, via the Archives of Manitoba.
LinkFilm. Sanatorium Board of Manitoba, The Road to Recovery, 1950, via the Archives of Manitoba.
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Digitized Publications of the Department of Indian Affairs
Camsell Arrow: Newsletter of the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital
City of Edmonton ArchivesThe Complete Indian News Collection, 1954-1982
LinkPictorial Review: Charles Camsell Indian Hospital and Canadian Indians and Eskimos
194819491950195119521953195419551956195719581959
Documentaries
APTN Next Chapter: Seeing Home, APTN, 2021
VideoAPTN Investigates: Carving Home, 2020
VideoAPTN Investigates: Writing Home, 2020
VideoAPTN Investigates: The Cure Was Worse, 2017
VideoAPTN Investigates: Reliving Indian and Inuit Tuberculosis Sanatoriums, 2017
VideoEdmonton Heritage Council, Camsell, 2016
VideoEdmonton City as Museum Project, Ghosts of Camsell, 2015
LinkMartha of the North, National Film Board of Canada, 2008 (This film is paywalled but can be accessed though public library or university library websites, or with NFB membership.)
VideoAlberta, Clint. Lost Songs. DVD. National Film Board of Canada (1999) (To request that this film be made available through NFB.ca, please email info@nfb.ca.)
CBC News, “Tuberculosis Treatment in South Takes Inuit from Their Families,” January 1989
Video
Podcasts and Oral Histories
Witness to Yesterday: The Champlain Society Podcast, “The History of Indian Hospitals, featuring Maureen Lux, 2018
LinkQikiqtani Truth Commission, Interview Videos (search by keywords like tuberculosis or sanatorium)
LinkCanada’s segregated health care, The Current, CBC Radio, 2013
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Lectures and Webinars
Webinar. Maureen Lux, “Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada, 1920-1980s,” National Collaborating Centers for Public Health
LinkPublic talk. Carol Harrison, Millar Bay Indian Hospital, University of Northern British Columbia, 2017
LinkPublic Talk. Maureen Lux, “Researching and Revealing Indian Hospitals in Canada,” Canada’s History
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Government and Community Documents
Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Final Report, 2024.
LinkSecrétariat aux affaires autochtones, Government du Quebec. Act to authorize
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the communication of personal information to the families of Indigenous children who went missing or died after being admitted to an institution, 2021-2022 Report. 2022.Statement of Apology on Behalf of the Government of Canada to Inuit for the Management of the Tuberculosis Epidemic from the 1940s-1960s, 2019
LinkQikiqtani Truth Commission Final Report. Aaniajurliriniq: Health Care in Qikiqtaaluk, 1950-1975. Qikiqtani Inuit Association, 2017.
LinkTruth and Reconciliation Commission. “Missing Children and Unmarked Burials,” Volume 4, Truth and Reconciliation Final Report, 2015
LinkTruth and Reconciliation Commission. "Health, 1940-2000,” Truth and Reconciliation Final Report, Chapter 36, Volume 1 Part II, pp. 189-235, 2015.
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Websites
Unmarked Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools – Canadian Geographic in collaboration with the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools.
LinkNational Student Memorial, National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
LinkThe Nanilavut Initiative
LinkDigital Knowledge Exchange on the History of Tuberculosis in Treaty 8
Link“Indian Hospitals in Canada,” UBC Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Center
LinkKids Boost Immunity: Elder Fred’s Story
LinkNewsletters. Mary Jane Logan McCallum and Scott de Groot. Indigenous Histories of Tuberculosis in Manitoba, 1930-1970 Newsletters (2014-2015)
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Select Books
Velvet Maud, "Health of the Prairie Metis 1900-1960: An Examination of the Social Determinants of Health and
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Infectious Disease," PhD thesis, University of Manitoba, 2021.Travis Hay, Inventing the Thrifty Gene: The Science of Settler Colonialism, 2021.
LinkRaymond Mason. Spirit of the Grassroots People: Seeking Justice for Indigenous Survivors of Canada's Colonial Education System, 2020.
LinkSamir Shaheen-Hussain. Fighting for A Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada. 2020.
Micro-DocumentaryEnglish websiteFrançaisMary Jane Logan McCallum and Adele Perry, Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City, 2018.
LinkGary Geddes, Medicine Unbundled: A Journey Through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care, 2017.
LinkShawn Selway, Nobody Here Will Harm You: Mass Evacuation From the Eastern Arctic, 1950-1965, 2016.
LinkMaureen Lux, Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada, 1920s-1980s, 2016.
LinkLaurie Meijer Drees, Healing Histories: Stories from Canada’s Indian Hospitals, 2013
LinkJames Daschuk, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, 2013.
LinkVelvet Maud, "Understanding Narratives of Illness and Contagion as a Strategy to Prevent Tuberculosis among Metis in Southern Manitoba," MA Thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2012.
LinkMaureen K. Lux, Medicine That Walks: Disease, Medicine and Canadian Plains Native Peoples, 1880-1940, 2001.
LinkMary-Ellen Kelm, Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia, 1900-50, 1999.
LinkPat Sandiford Grygier, Long Way from Home: The Tuberculosis Epidemic among the Inuit, 1997.
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Articles
Many of the articles featured here are behind paywalls in academic journal databases. If you would like a copy of one of these articles and do not have access, please email tbphotos@uwinnipeg.ca.
Sara Komarnisky, “From the Sanatorium to the Museum and Beyond: The Circulation of Art and Craft Made by Indigenous Patients at Tuberculosis Hospitals.” In Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America: Material Culture in Motion, c. 1780-1980, eds. Beverly Lemire, Laura Peers, Anne Whitelaw. Montreal: Montreal-Queen’s University Press, 2021.
LinkEbba Olofsson and Joseph Folco, “Narratives of Displacement and Trauma. The Tuberculosis Epidemic among the Inuit of Nunavik in the 1940s-1950s.” Journal of Northern Studies 14, no. 1 (2020): 62–82.
LinkSara Komarnisky, Paul Hackett, Sylvia Abonyic, Courtney Heffernan, and Richard Long. “‘Years ago’: Reconciliation and First Nations Narratives of Tuberculosis in the Canadian Prairie Provinces.” Critical Public Health 26, no. 4 (2016): 381–393.
LinkJessica Moffatt, Maria Mayan, and Richard Long. “Sanitoriums and the Canadian Colonial Legacy: The Untold Experiences of Tuberculosis Treatment.” Qualitative Health Research 23, no. 12 (December 1, 2013): 1591–99.
LinkFrank Tester, Paule McNicoll, and Quyen Tran. “Structural Violence and the 1962-1963 Tuberculosis Epidemic in Eskimo Point, N.W.T.” Études/Inuit/Studies 36, no. 2 (2012): 165–85.
LinkLaurie Meijer Drees, “The Nanaimo and Charles Camsell Indian Hospitals: First Nations’ Narratives of Health care, 1945-1965,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 43 no.85 (May 2010): 165-191
LinkMaureen Lux, ‘An Ideal Home for The Consumptive’: Place, Race and Tuberculosis in The Canadian West, Locating Health: Historical and Anthropological Investigations of Place and Health eds. C. Fletcher, E. Dyck, 2010
LinkMaureen Lux, “Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920-1950s.” Canadian Historical Review 91 no. 3 (September 2010): 407-434
LinkEbba Olofsson, Tara L. Holton and Imaapik 'Jacob' Partridge, "Negotiating identities: Inuit tuberculosis evacuees in the 1940s-1950s," Études/Inuit/Studies 32, Number 2, 2008, p. 127–149
LinkPaul Hackett, “Tuberculosis Mortality among the Students of St. Joseph’s Residential school in 1942-43: Historical and Geographical Context.” Research in Anthropology and Linguistics 3 (2008): 118-133
LinkFrank James Tester, Paule McNicoll, and Peter Irniq. “Writing for Our Lives: The Language of Homesickness, Self-Esteem and the Inuit TB ‘Epidemic.’” Études/Inuit/Studies 25, no. ½ (2001): 121–40.
LinkMaureen Lux, “Perfect Subjects: Race, Tuberculosis and the Qu’Appelle BCG Vaccine Trial.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 15 (1998): 277-95.
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News Articles
Special interlocutor releases final residential school graves report, APTN, 2024
LinkTuberculosis: Inuk man identifies mother’s burial site in southern Canada, 61 years later, CBC News, 2019
LinkInuk student sews parka to tell 'heartbreaking' story of tuberculosis sanatoriums, CBC News, 2021
LinkFormer patient alleges physical, sexual abuse at Sask. tuberculosis hospital, CTV News, 2022
LinkClass-action lawsuit alleges ‘widespread’ physical abuse of Indigenous patients at tuberculosis hospitals, CTV News, 2021
LinkEmerging from the Long Shadow of Canada’s Indian Hospitals, The Local, 2021
LinkSearch for unmarked graves unearths memories from former ‘Indian hospital’ patients, CBC News, 2021
Link‘It has to be heard’: Greater Victoria survivor recounts torture he endured at Indian Hospital, Victoria News, 2021
LinkSite of former Camsell Hospital searched for unmarked graves, CBC News, 2021
LinkAfter 58 years of searching, a residential school survivor finds her baby brother’s grave, CBC News, 2021.
LinkOrganizers raise $77,000 to help Snuneymuxw First Nation identify unmarked graves, CBC News, 2021.
Link‘Indian Hospitals’ lawsuit triggers memories of horrific abuse at Manitoba TB sanatorium, APTN News, 2018
LinkMistreated: The legacy of segregated hospitals haunts Indigenous survivors, CBC News, n.d.
Link'Our people were experimented on': Indigenous sanatorium survivors recall medical tests, CBC News, 2017
LinkHistorians make progress on research of Manitoba sanatoriums, Brandon Sun, 2017
LinkWhat happened to Jim? Experiments on Canada’s Indigenous populations, Global News, 2016
LinkThe story of a separate and unequal Canadian health care system, CBC Sunday Edition, 2016
LinkFormer Ninette Sanatorium patients recall abuse suffered at hands of staff, Brandon Sun, 2016.
LinkResearch shedding light on dark history of treating ‘Indian TB’ in Manitoba, Brandon Sun, 2016
Link'Indian hospital' survivors want in on residential school agreement, CBC News, 2014
LinkFirst Nation infants subject to "human experimental work" for TB vaccine in 1930s-40s, APTN News, 2013
LinkTB’s dark history, Winnipeg Free Press, 2009
LinkLost, but not forgotten: Push on to identify graves of long-ago TB victims, Winnipeg Free Press, 2009
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HIST 3590 Open Classroom Series
These lectures took place as part of an open classroom lecture series in partnership with Dr. Mary Jane McCallum's HIST 3590 Indigenous Health History: Treaty, Policy, and Colonial and Indigenous Health Science course at the University of Winnipeg in Winter 2023.
Dr. Samir Shaheen-Hussain - Fighting for A Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada - March 28, 2023
LinkDr. Travis Hay - The Legacy of Josias Fiddler: Resisting Healthcare Inequities On-Reserve in Sandy Lake First Nation - March 2, 2023
LinkSenator Yvonne Boyer - Rights, Healthcare and Indigenous People - February 9, 2023
LinkMiranda Jimmy - Three Sides to Every Story: Official Records, Community Knowledge, and Living Memory Tell the Truths of the Indigenous Hospital Experience - January 31, 2023
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