Allegations of abuse

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This article was published 04/11/2009 (5802 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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 Nisichawayasih 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, 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 Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin (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 and 1960s.

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 the sanatoriums. Dozens of elders say they suffered cruel and inhumane care.

"People felt like they were being (used to test) new medications. People talked about being given needles and blacking out and waking up and not knowing what happened to them when they were blacked out," former MKO TB co-ordinator Inez Vystrcil-Spence said of the allegations.

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 a fund to restore burial sites.

The legacy of these stories of abuse at the sanatoriums is strong in aboriginal people’s minds and explains the fear many have about seeking medical care for TB.

The death rate among First Nations people 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. The provincial health ministry 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 AMC 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."

Developing a process to help people find loved ones buried in unmarked graves has been slow and even government officials are confused about where people can find more information.

Manitoba has no central registry for burial records of people who died of TB, let alone archival information for the many First Nations TB patients buried in unmarked graves.

A spokesman for the provincial health minister said ministry officials are working with Manitoba Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin (MKO), a lobby group that represents 30 northern First Nations, to develop a process to help people access such records.

People in search of the graves of TB patients can phone the TB unit, operated by Manitoba Health, said Charles McDougall, a spokesman for provincial Health Minister Theresa Oswald.

But Manitoba Health said that’s not true.

A spokeswoman said the TB unit doesn’t have any burial record information, only "date of death" of a TB patient. She said burial records are the responsibility of municipalities, and in many cases, funeral homes have the information.

The RM of Strathcona has burial records for close to 200 First Nations TB patients buried in unmarked graves in Belmont. The reeve did not return repeated calls from the Free Press.