Building the System: Churches, Missionary Organizations, the Federal State, and Health Care in Southern Alberta Treaty 7 Communities, 1890-1930

• Published in: Journal of Canadian Studies
• Main Author: Burnett, Kristin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 2007
• Subjects: History; Cultural Studies; First Nations; stoney
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/jcs.41.3.18; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/jcs.41.3.18

This essay looks at the evolution of institutional structures of western health care in First Nations communities in southern Alberta from 1880 to 1930. During the 1890s various churches and their missionary organizations built cottage hospitals, school infirmaries, and dispensaries in Blackfoot, Peigan, Blood, Stoney, and Tsuu T’ina communities. In order to pay for these facilities churches formed a partnership with the federal government, similar to the existing one around education. European-Canadian women, under the auspices of missions and later employed by the Department of Indian Affairs, were front line health-care workers in Native communities, and occupied a central role in the creation and operation of these institutions. Indeed, the churches and their female workers laid the foundations for the state-run apparatus that emerged in the years before and after the First World War.