APTN National News
Canadian sanatoriums and Indian Hospitals are InFocus this week.
Many Canadians are only beginning to learn about the atrocities that took place at Indian Residential schools and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is bringing the stories of survivors forward.
A deeper look into those decades reveals that children faced more than just the horrors of residential schools.
Last year, APTN reported that First Nation children were being used for nutritional experiments. Then it emerged children were also used as test subjects for tuberculosis vaccine trials in the 1930s and 1940s at a sanatorium in southern Saskatchewan.
Joining APTN for a discussion on the issue is Saul Day who attended the Fort William sanatorium in Ontario during the 1950s. Day also attended residential school for 14 years.
Vancouver Island University First Nation studies professor Laurie Meijer Drees, author of Healing Histories: Stories of Canada’s Indian Hospitals, also joins the discussion.
I was in the ole Nanaimo Indian Hospital 1960’s, It was not a good experience for me. I remember the terrible treatment I received. I was only 4 going onto 5 when I was in there with my Mother, two sisters and brother.