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Starvation Politics: Aboriginal nutrition experiments

Revelations that Canada once intentionally kept First Nations' children malnourished doesn't surprise historian James Daschuk who says Canada often used food to assert control.
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If Canada is contrite about taking First Nations children from their families and sending them to residential schools -- what apology is appropriate for not feeding them enough once there? We explore new revelations that some aboriginal people were kept intentionally malnourished for government nutritional experiments.


Newly uncovered documents reveal that about the time Canadian soldiers shouldered weapons to stop some of history's worst crimes unfolding in Europe, unsettling events were unfolding at home. Employees of the Canadian government were conducting experiments in malnutrition; intentionally withholding nourishment from unknowing subjects.

We were hungry all the time. Most of the time anyway. They gave us just enough food to more or less I guess just to keep us alive, I guess ... We ate it because we were hungry. We didn't have a choice in the matter. Either that or starve to death.Leonard Pootlass on his B.C. residential school experience

The research detailing these dietary experiments was uncovered by Ian Mosby, a post-doctoral fellow in history at the University of Guelph.


Steve Skead - Attended a residential school in Kenora, Ontario

Ian Mosby's documents show St. Mary's Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ontario was also part of the program. Steve Skead spent 12 years there as a child. He joined us from Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation in Ontario.


James Daschuk - Author and Historian, University of Regina

The report, while unsettling, doesn't surprise James Daschuk. He's a historian with the Centre for Kinesiology, Health and Sport at the University of Regina and says the federal government has a long history of using food to pressure First Nations. Daschuk explores this in his book "Clearing The Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation and the Loss of Aboriginal Life." 


Archival Material

Historian James Daschuk was kind enough to send us some documents that paint a fascinating and shocking portrait of destitution and ill-health in the lives of First Nations in the 1940s. It's unclear how the information in this 1946 report was gathered, but regardless, this document remains a distressing artifact. (Enlarge button is on the bottom-right)


This segment was produced by The Current's Gord Westmacott, Shannon Higgins and Karin Marley.


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