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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Allegations of abuse and mysterious deaths

By: Jen Skerritt

Posted: 11/20/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

NELSON HOUSE -- Madeline Spence was

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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