Hide Article Text (OCR)
able historical publications from the Sanatorium Board of Manitoba. The website is also home to the Missing Patients Initiative Online Research guide and the project’s blog, which regularly gives updates on its research and upcoming events.Erin Millions said the website came into existence as part of project’s attempts to foster community engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was a shift from in-person events to virtual ones.“Since we couldn’t go out to communities anymore during COVII), we set out to construct the website so that people could access the materials without us having to bring it to them. That’s really what’s been at the heart of this project — making Indigenous records and histories accessible to Indigenous communities,” Millions, PhD and research director with the project, said.The Brandon Sanatorium, which ran from 1947 to 1959, was part of Canada’s segregated health-care system that saw Indigenous people treated as part of the Federal Indian Hostile Friendship Centre to file a claim with the lawsuit as well. She said it’s important that the victims and their families receive justice for their time at the sanatoriums.“They experimented on my mom. She had a big hole in her leg from an injection, and her teeth were rotten. They tortured them,” Huntinghawk said.She travelled to the site of the Ninette Sanatorium in spring to offer some tobacco and say a prayer for all the people who were treated there. She also picked up a book about the sanatorium her mother stayed at, but said she hasn’t been able to read it yet.“I haven’t really had the courage to open up that book, in case I see my mom’s name in there.”Funding for the project’s new website, indigenoustbhis-tory.ca, was provided in part by a grant from Manitoba Indigenous Reconciliation and Northern Relations in partnership with the Manitoba Lung Association.»mleybourne@brandonsun.com »Twitter: @miraleybournePart of a tuberculosis sanatorium. (Manitoba Lung Association)pital System, which was funded separately from the other Canadian health-care systems. It’s a history that Millions said many people in Westman are not aware of.The existence of the Brandon Indian Sanatorium has been written out of the public memory of Brandon. It’s important to acknowledge that it existed. It was there for many years. There are many community members that worked at the sanatorium.”First Nations and Inuit people came from all over Manitoba to be treated at the Brandon Sanatorium. Many of them were buried in Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, including children sent to the sanatorium from residential schools.One of the things that came out of Millions’ research is just how interconnected tuberculosis hospitals and residential schools truly were. When it comes to movements like Every Child Matters, the reconciliation movement from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, this is an initial schools but in hospitals. Where they died impacted where they were buried, so we have to be looking for these missing students in the hospital records.”Since Manitoba has very restrictive laws around personal health information — even for historical medical records — the website is a great way for survivors and families to trace their histories.“The photos are records of Indigenous health history. They tell us the histories about people’s experiences in the hospitals in ways that sometimes we’re not able to access otherwise.”Most of the people in the photographs are not named, so what the project did before COVID, and what it continues to do now in person and virtually through the website, is update the archival records as knowledge grows. The project also repatriates copies of photos to family members.Everything the project is doing is of particular importance to Debbie Huntinghawk,Children who were treated at one of Manitoba’s tuberculosis sanatoriums.portant finding. plained. “When people areWe cant understand those looking for missing residentialsystems if we think of them school students, some of thoseseparately,” Millions ex- students died not at residen
Newspaper Details
Brandon Sun
Brandon, Manitoba, CA
Thu, Jul 07, 2022
Page 20
Full Page
Clipped by
Kenneth J.
NA, NA 08 Feb 2024
Other Publications Near Brandon, Manitoba
Brandon Western Sun
Brandon Daily Sun
Brandon Brandon Sun
Brandon Sunday
Brandon Sunday Free Press
