Description
Book SynopsisSeparate 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.
Tracing the history of the system from its fragmentary origins to its gradual collapse, Maureen K. Lux describes the arbitrary and contradictory policies that governed the “Indian Hospitals,” the experiences of patients and staff, and the vital grassroots activism that pressed the federal government to acknowledge its treaty obligations.
A disturbing look at the dark side of the liberal welfare state, Separate Beds reveals a history of racism
Trade Review
'Lux's detailed account will surely be of interest to scholars of Aboriginal history and health care as well as to the people interested in the development of Indian hospitals in Canada.' -- Joanne DeCosse Canada's History October-November 2016 "In painstaking research and matter-of-fact reportage, Associate Professor Lux of Brock University documents Canadian apartheid. Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals In Canada is a riveting and extraordinary account of mistreatment of citizens." -- Tom Korski Blacklocks Reporter, Saturday, June 4, 2016
Table of Contents
Chapter One: Making Indian Hospitals Chapter Two: Neither Law nor Treaty Chapter Three: Everyone in Their Place: Labour in the Indian Hospitals Chapter Four: Life and Death in an Indian Hospital Chapter Five: Getting out of the Hospital Business Chapter Six: "The Government's eyes were opened": The Treaty Right to Health Care
