Medicine Unbundled
by
Gary Geddes
ISBN: 9781772031652
Publication Date: 2017
"We can no longer pretend we don't know about residential schools, murdered and missing Aboriginal women and 'Indian hospitals.' The only outstanding question is how we respond." --Tom Sandborn, Vancouver Sun A shocking exposé of the dark history and legacy of segregated Indigenous health care in Canada. After the publication of his critically acclaimed 2011 book Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer's Search for Justice and Healing in Africa, author Gary Geddes turned the investigative lens on his own country, embarking on a long and difficult journey across Canada to interview Indigenous elders willing to share their experiences of segregated health care, including their treatment in the "Indian hospitals" that existed from coast to coast for over half a century. The memories recounted by these survivors--from gratuitous drug and surgical experiments to electroshock treatments intended to destroy the memory of sexual abuse--are truly harrowing, and will surely shatter any lingering illusions about the virtues or good intentions of our colonial past.