March 24 is World TB Day, in recognition of the day in 1882 when Dr. Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the germ that causes tuberculosis (TB).
In 1952, on the Stony Reserve in Alberta, Bella Two Young Men was taken away from her husband and forcibly kept in a segregated hospital for tuberculosis treatment. Her husband Lot Two Young Men tried time and time again to get his wife back home. He wrote letters and made appeals to the local Medical Superintendent. He refused to give up the hope that he would see his wife again.
In the officials’ eyes, there was never any chance that Lot Two Young Men’s pleas would be heard. In fact, the global battle against tuberculosis was about to escalate the settler colonial genocide against Indigenous communities in Canada.
The Indian Health Regulations recognized two classes of people: “Indians and non-Indians”. The regulations themselves only applied to those considered to be “Indians”. The Canadian government and the Canadian Tuberculosis Association had long viewed the rising rates of TB among Indigenous populations as due to a state of “racial carelessness”1: Indigenous peoples were viewed as ignorant and careless of their health. The state used this viewpoint as an argument for segregating Indigenous peoples presumed to have TB from the general population – Indigenous peoples were positioned as a danger to white families, who had been seeing decreased rates of TB due to advances in medicine and care practices. A limited number of state- and church-run Indigenous TB sanatoria or “Indian hospitals” had been in existence for over a decade already, keeping Indigenous patients separated from their families and communities and often subjected to the same or worse abuses many of them faced in Residential Schools.
The horrific impacts of Canadian government regulations on Indigenous communities were covered up with “false benevolence” – a performance of care and concern that masked a desire for control and assimilation. Justifications for systemic oppression were made over and over again: it was the mandate of the state, and the churches to “ensure” that Indigenous communities were cared for, because they could not care adequately for themselves. When it came to TB, these justifications were even more emphatic. In a 1936 article, David Stewart, Medical Superintendent of the Sanatoria Board of Manitoba, wrote, “We are the guardians of the Indians, we, the people of Canada… The world suffers increasing spasms of conscience about what is done by dominant peoples like ourselves with native races such as the Indians.”2 Forced medical care was presented as a kindness.
The Indian Act was amended in 1953 to include the Indian Health Regulations. These policies “made it a crime for Indigenous people to refuse to see a doctor, to refuse to go to hospital, and to leave hospital before discharge”. They allowed the RCMP to arrest patients, forcibly hospitalize them, return patients who left against medical advice, and send patients who were “recalcitrant” to jail. Faced with imprisonment no matter what they did, Indigenous patients were forced to stay in Indian hospitals, where abuse and mistreatment were rampant.
When many of these patients died, the state required the patients’ family to bear the cost of their return to their land – often, patients were buried in unmarked graves and their whereabouts were left unknown to their communities.
The regulations took the existing segregated system and made it still more oppressive: now, it would be illegal for an Indigenous person to refuse medical assessment or to be sent to a hospital. In a 1953 letter, Deputy Minister of National Health G.D.W. Cameron wrote, “The lack of a compulsory feature in our treatment scheme has had…disastrous results for whole families”, claiming that allowing Indigenous people autonomy over their health resulted in them infecting their own families and communities. Having lost family members to Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals, Indigenous peoples who were targeted by health officials would sometimes refuse Western care. After the new regulations, anyone who refused to comply could be fined or jailed.
To ensure compulsory care, the Indian Health Regulations conferred special enforcement powers to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Under the new regulations, the RCMP were empowered to forcibly bring patients to Indian hospitals, ensure that nonconsensual examinations were conducted, and oversee the detention of patients who were deemed noncompliant. In some cases, police officers were actually given permission to undertake medical procedures themselves in the absence of a state health official, particularly in Inuit territories.
The regulations stressed that, although Indigenous communities strongly objected to the use of police force and indefinite detention, “…it is necessary to take compulsory action.” Empowering police force under the guise of false benevolence served to further cement the fears of non-Indigenous communities regarding Indigenous people, making them seem dangerous, a threat to public health, and in need of state control.
The 1953 Indian Health Regulations are just one piece of a story that is deeply interconnected with the history and ongoing impacts of the Indian Residential School system. Indian Hospitals and Indian Residential Schools were designed to work together in the Canadian state’s larger mechanism of assimilation at all costs. The ongoing discrimination against Indigenous peoples, and the ongoing disparity in health and healthcare for Indigenous community, is directly linked to this history.
The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre is working to tell some of the stories of TB in Canada, Indian Hospitals and their Survivors, and healing from the impacts of systemic harm. Our exhibition on Indian Hospitals, “Mistreated”, will launch in collaboration with Digital Museums Canada in 2026. For more information on “Mistreated”, visit the exhibition page.
The Indian Residential School Survivor Support Society has established a 24-hour Crisis Line for former students and their families. Call: 1-866-925-4419.
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- Lux, Maureen K. “Care for the “Racially Careless”: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920–1950s.” Canadian Historical Review, vol. 91, no. 3, Sept. 2010, pp. 407–434, https://doi.org/10.3138/chr.91.3.407. ↩︎
- Stewart, D A. “The Red Man and the White Plague.” Canadian Medical Association journal vol. 35,6 (1936): 674-6. ↩︎