Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952
Between 1942 and 1952, some of Canada’s leading nutrition experts, in cooperation with various federal departments, conducted an unprecedented series of nutritional studies of Aboriginal communities and residential schools. The most ambitious and perhaps best known of these was the 1947-1948 James B...
| Published in: | Histoire sociale/Social history |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Les Publications Histoire sociale - Social History Inc.
2015
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| Online Access: | https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/view/40239 https://doi.org/10.1353/his.2013.0015 |
| Summary: | Between 1942 and 1952, some of Canada’s leading nutrition experts, in cooperation with various federal departments, conducted an unprecedented series of nutritional studies of Aboriginal communities and residential schools. The most ambitious and perhaps best known of these was the 1947-1948 James Bay Survey of the Attawapiskat and Rupert’s House Cree First Nations. Less well known were two separate long-term studies that went so far as to include controlled experiments conducted, apparently without the subjects’ informed consent or knowledge, on malnourished Aboriginal populations in Northern Manitoba and, later, in six Indian residential schools. This article explores these studies and experiments, in part to provide a narrative record of a largely unexamined episode of exploitation and neglect by the Canadian government. At the same time, it situates these studies within the context of broader federal policies governing the lives of Aboriginal peoples, a shifting Canadian consensus concerning the science of nutrition, and changing attitudes towards the ethics of biomedical experimentation on human beings during a period that encompassed, among other things, the establishment of the Nuremberg Code of experimental research ethics. Entre 1942 et 1952, certains des principaux spécialistes canadiens de la nutrition ont réalisé, en collaboration avec divers ministères fédéraux, une série sans précédent d’études nutritionnelles dans les communautés autochtones et les pensionnats indiens. La plus ambitieuse et peut-être la plus connue d’entre elles est l’enquête réalisée en 1947-1948 auprès des nations cries d’Attawapiskat et de Rupert House de la baie James. Mais ce qu’on savait moins, c’est que deux études à long terme distinctes étaient même allées jusqu’à faire des expériences contrôlées, apparemment sans leur consentement éclairé ou à leur insu, sur les populations souffrant de malnutrition du Nord du Manitoba et, plus tard, de six pensionnats indiens. L’article examine ces études et ces expériences pour, en ... |
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