Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Allegations of abuse and mysterious deaths
just 16 years old in December 1950 when
doctors diagnosed her with TB and sent her
to the Clearwater Lake sanatorium in The Pas.
Spence suspects she was living at a residential
school, away from her home in Nisichawayasihk
Cree Nation, when she was exposed to the
disease. Historians say the schools, with their
dormitories and crowded classrooms, were
breeding grounds for TB.
Spence was forced to clean the spittoons and
toilets with another girl who was diagnosed with
TB.
"They sent her out and she died, and I never
(saw) her again," she said.
Spence remained in Clearwater for five years,
five long years of fear and inactivity. Many
First Nations patients died during that time, and
Spence remembers the frequent noise of bodies
being wheeled out through the sanatorium's long
hallways, a grim sign that another patient was
dead.
She said it wasn't until her last year there that
patients were given activities such as crafts to
pass the time. In five years, she never had a bath
or shower, and nurses didn't tell her she was getting
better until the day Spence learned she was
going home.
"I was thinking, one time when I was crying,
I thought, why cry for nothing? I'm going to die
here anyway," Spence said, sitting on a park
bench in Nelson House.
"That's what I thought.
I never thought I'd come
home so I stopped crying.
I was just waiting to die."
In 1998, chiefs of Manitoba
Keewatinowi Okimakanak
(MKO), a lobby
group that represents 30
northern First Nations,
called on the provincial
and federal governments
to launch an investigation
into allegations of abuse
and mysterious deaths in
sanatoriums in The Pas,
Brandon and Ninette --
three hospitals where
most First Nations and
Inuit patients from the
North were sent in the
1940s, '50s and '60s.
Accusations of suspicious deaths at the sanatoriums
arose by the late 1940s. The late chief
Cornelius Bignell of Opaskwayak Cree First
Nation sent a letter to Indian agent Mr. E. Law
in 1949, saying former employees and patients
of the Clearwater Lake sanatorium claimed that
children and adults had died mysteriously.
MKO began hosting annual TB conferences in
2007, and close to 100 elders shared their memories
and concerns about what happened inside
sanatoriums. Dozens of elders say they suffered
cruel and inhumane treatment.
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs echoed
MKO's request for an investigation last year and
asked for a process to identify aboriginal TB
patients in unmarked graves and notify their
families and establish a fund to restore burial
sites.
The death rate among First Nations patients
in sanatoriums was shockingly high. Sanatorium
Board documents show that 40 per cent of
aboriginal patients admitted to the Clearwater
Lake sanatorium in 1947 died, in part because
the overwhelming majority were admitted with
moderate to advanced TB. By comparison, that
same year, the number of white people who died
in Ninette declined, and only eight per cent of
white patients there died.
First Nations leaders say the federal and
provincial governments haven't committed to an
inquiry or to exhuming and returning the bodies
of patients dumped in unmarked graves. Manitoba
Health officials and the federal minister of
health did not respond to Free Press questions
about redressing the leaders' concerns.
"We need to continue the work that needs to be
done to get that part of our history addressed,"
said Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief
Ron Evans. "Look how long it took just to get the
residential school apology acknowledged and recognized.
It's going to take money, and it's going to
take people to do the research."
jen.skerritt@freepress.mb.ca
winnipegfreepress.com
TUBERCULOSIS: THE FORGOTTEN DISEASE / Part 4
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 20, 2009 A11
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1 Comments
Posted by: Chrissy
November 20, 2009 at 9:27 PM
I think this is disgusting and the government should be ashamed of themselves but I'm not surprised with the federal and provincial government they would rather have issues go away then admit they made a mistake and deal with very important issues. Issues such as people's rights and stop the abusing with aboriginal people and people with intellectual disabilities.