Document Analysis Essay: Photo of Fort William Indian Hospital

When looking into and exploring Canada’s history, most Canadians have come to believe that it is a history mostly characterized by that of peace, with the country achieving its independence from Britain peacefully. This not accurate, however, when looking into the significant dark history associated with the poor treatment of Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples by the Canadian white settlers and government. The purpose of this document analysis was to analyze an aspect of this history in Ontario and how it holds historical, social, and cultural significance. With this, the document under investigation is a photo taken in 1960 of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium in what is now Thunder bay, Ontario. The Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it amounted to a total of “22 hospitals with more than 2,200 beds, [and operated] mostly in Ontario,” to racially segregate Canadian Aboriginal patients from the general population, mainly treating those suffering from tuberculosis which plagued the Aboriginal population. The implicit historical, social, and cultural implications of this facility are increasingly noteworthy and are important when exploring its significance to post-World War Two Ontario. The historical significance of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it can be analyzed through the initial reasons for the creation of these facilities, highlighting the purposes they served; and relating it to the prevalence of tuberculosis in the Aboriginal population as opposed to the non-Aboriginal population, which led to the former developing a negative/unfair/and unrealistic stereotype. Additionally, the cultural significance of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it, can be similarly tracked by analyzing their true purpose, analyzing what grounds determined one’s admittance to these facilities, in addition to how their use is almost universally tied to the modernization of Canada’s National (white) Healthcare. Finally, the social significance of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it can be analyzed by highlighting the practices of these facilities, looking into the experience of its Aboriginal patients, in addition to what our society today thinks on the significance and implications of these facilities.

When analyzing the historical significance of Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it is important to highlight the situation in Ontario at the time and in what ways both the Canadian and Ontario governments justified there use. In the years after the Second World War, there was a “realization that Aboriginal communities were suffering the ravages of a highly infectious and debilitating disease: tuberculosis,... [where] infection rates were dramatically higher in Aboriginal communities than in non-Aboriginal communities.” This impacted how Aboriginals came to be viewed being “characterized as ‘racially careless’ concerning their own health,... [in addition to being] seen as a menace to their neighbors and a danger to the nation.” This is of historical significance, showcasing Canada’s “colonial project of racial exclusion and segregation,” through its attempt “to confine illness on reserves, marking Aboriginal bodies as fundamentally weak and diseased,” highlighting a cultural divide between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canada. Finally, when looking at the historical need for “Indian Hospitals” and the prevalence of tuberculosis in Aboriginal communities - to the extent of it being labeled as an Aboriginal disease - it is important to analyze the causes and background behind how the disease became so prevalent in Aboriginal communities in the first place. Interestingly, for Aboriginal communities tuberculosis “was not the major cause of death until after they had settled on the reserves,” and the conditions of these reserves, like “the concentration of the Indians in fixed residences on the reserve, lack of sanitation, their contact with the surrounding white settlers, and the concentration of the children in boarding schools for education,” facilitated the spread of tuberculosis. From this we can see how the historical need for these “Indian Schools” can be easily tied to the actions of the Canadian white settlers and government.

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Through the analysis of the image of and history behind Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium, an emphasis on its cultural significance becomes evermore apparent when exploring the true purpose of this facility and others like it. These implicit purposes are tied to a point from Professor Onusko’s Lecture 11: Indigenous peoples in Ontario where he explains how “despite new hopes; hearings in 1947 promised little and continued earlier policies of solving the ‘Indian problem’.” With this paired with the emphasis on Canada’s colonial practices from above, we can see how the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it are concerned with dealing with the “Indian problem” and through coercive institutionalization force the assimilation of the Aboriginal population, through the promise of delivering medical treatment. From this the grounds for admittance to these hospitals become extremely relevant, with treatment being provided exclusively to the Aboriginal population based on their “Indian status.” This is further emphasized through how it was “social, not medical, criteria [which] determined who might receive care, [where] young residential school students whose families demonstrated progress along the path to assimilation,” were granted acceptance into the “Indian Hospitals” while other Aboriginal children were not. This showcases the cultural significance behind the “Indian Hospitals” with the concern regarding the “Indian problem” being displayed by the Ontario and Canadian governments through the creation, purposes, and practices of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium. The cultural significance of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium can also be explored through how “Indian Hospitals,” can trace their creation back to when “Canada was consciously defining national health… [and] a normal white citizenship,” where “hospitals began to attract patients who demanded, and would pay for, the benefits that medicine seemed to promise.” As a result these “Indian Hospitals,” “acknowledged community prejudices that demanded segregated health care, ensuring that modernizing hospitals were increasingly white hospitals.” The cultural significance of this aspect of the “Indian Hospital” in Ontario is plain to see with a clear division between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canada, to the extent that the former’s population was being left out of the nation, where modern hospitals “saw no need to take up valuable beds and offend middle-class sensibilities by admitting Aboriginal patients.”

Finally, through delving into the history of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it, we can see the social significance behind these facilities, through interacting with and analyzing the practices that occurred their, and how those patients who experienced life in these hospitals feel about what they were put through there, upon being discharged and today. From looking at interviews from survivors, there is a common theme stressing that life in these “Indian Hospitals” was not at all pleasant, where “patients and observers perceived the facilities as impersonal institutions from which they felt alienated and that served to alienate them from their homes and families,” thereby stressing a theme “of the ‘survivance’ of First Nations people despite the colonizing effects of the hospitals, their staff, and associated medical treatments.” This shows the social significance and ramifications of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium, where it worked to divide and alienate its Aboriginal patients from the greater Aboriginal population. Importantly to note is how for the Aboriginal community, “healing and care derived primarily from their families and communities;” and that the “IHS[Indian Health Services] hospitals and the institutional medicine that they represented and delivered in an objective, scientific treatments did not complement such a view.” From this we can gather and determine an incompatibility between the two treatment options, and see the social significance behind how the practices of Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium work to alienate its patients from the Aboriginal society. Finally, it is important to analyze how society today feels about what should be done concerning the memories of these facilities and reconciliation as a whole. This idea was emphasized in the TVO article - in which the document was attached - outlining the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) of 2007, and how because Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium doesn’t qualify as a residential school its survivors are not “entitled to financial compensation for the abuse they suffered.” This highlights significant social injustice towards Canada’s Aboriginal people by the Canadian government and further showcases the social significance of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium.

Through working with the 1960 photograph of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium for the document analysis, the dark history of white Canada and Ontario, and its relationship to its Aboriginal people become illuminated. Through research and analysis of this facility, we are able to explore a great number of significant historical, social, and cultural implications tied to it that are significant to life in post-World War Two Ontario. The historical significance of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it was analyzed by exploring the initial reasons for their creation, highlighting the purposes they served. This was related to the prevalence of tuberculosis in the Aboriginal population as opposed to the non-Aboriginal population, and how this led to a certain stereotype of the former. Additionally, the cultural significance of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it, was explored by analyzing the true purpose of these facilities, analyzing the grounds that determined admittance, in addition to how their use is almost universally tied to the modernization of Canada’s National (white) Healthcare. Finally, the social significance of the Fort William Indian Hospital Sanatorium and other “Indian Hospitals” like it was viewed by highlighting the practices of these facilities, looking into the experience of its Aboriginal patients, in addition to what our society today thinks on the significance and implications of these facilities.