Settlement reached for Survivors of Native Hospitals

Carol Baldwin,
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Ottawa has reached a proposed settlement agreement with Indigenous survivors of the segregated health facilities known as “Indian hospitals” to provide individual compensation ranging from $10,000 to $200,000. Tens of thousands of First Nations, Inuit and Métis patients, including children, were admitted to the overcrowded, poorly staffed and unsanitary institutions. Survivors speak of physical and sexual abuse from hospital staff, along with forcible confinement to beds without a medical reason and being subject to medical experiments. Two such hospitals operated in Saskatchewan at Fort Qu’Appelle and in North Battleford.

A deal announced on Thursday, March 6, aims to resolve a $1.1 billion class-action lawsuit on behalf of former patients from a decades-long segregated health-care system that was plagued by widespread mistreatment and abuse. This agreement proposes an uncapped amount of compensation for survivors, with individual payments varying based on the level of verbal, physical, or sexual abuse they experienced. Compensation will also be available for the immediate family members of the survivors. The agreement covers 33 federally operated Indian hospitals that were in operation from January 1936 until December 1981.

A foundation will be created to administer an additional $ 150 million healing fund for survivors to access money for the revitalization of their Indigenous languages, education and wellness. The foundation would also manage a separate $235.5-million research and commemoration fund to preserve the history of the institutions and to help local burial sites associated with them. As with the residential schools, the government would not fund repatriation in the case of a death, and many were buried on the hospital grounds.

The Federal Court of Canada will decide whether to approve the proposed settlement agreement during hearings scheduled for June 10 and 11. Class members will have an opportunity to review the proposed Settlement Agreement and provide their comments to the Court. Survivors are encouraged to provide their feedback in advance. The Court is tasked with determining whether the Settlement is fair, reasonable, and in the plaintiffs’ best interests. If approved by the Court, compensation and other benefits will be available to eligible class members.

On January 30, 2018, two Canadian law firms filed the $1.1B class-action lawsuit on behalf of former ‘Indian hospital’ patients. The lawsuit focused on 29 segregated hospitals operated across the country by the federal government between 1945 and the early 1980s and on alleged “horrific treatment.” Researchers say thousands of Indigenous patients may have been admitted to the institutions during that four-decade span.

The statement of claim stated that facilities were overcrowded and inadequately staffed, and Indigenous patients were unable to leave on their own accord and were “forcibly detained, isolated, and, at times, restrained to their beds.” It also alleged that “systemic failures created a toxic environment in which physical and sexual abuse was rampant.”  In January 2020, a judge certified the class-action lawsuit, allowing it to move forward. Since then, the Government of Canada and counsel for the plaintiffs have been engaged in discussions to resolve this litigation outside the courts.

On 18 September 2024, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) formally apologized for the experiences of Indigenous peoples in Canada’s health systems acknowledging both the specific harms done to Indigenous peoples in Indian hospitals and the medical experimentation that was done to Indigenous children and adults, which were present at Indian hospitals and in residential schools.

Indian hospitals were notoriously substandard facilities operated by the federal government, starting in the 1930s, to separate Indigenous people from the rest of the Canadian population and to stop the spread of tuberculosis. In 1945, the Indian Health Services became part of the newly created Department of National Health and Welfare. A particularly strong wave of tuberculosis started in 1952. Tuberculosis spread easily through First Nations and Inuit communities, including in Residential Schools, where healthy children were routinely exposed to infected children, and poor sanitary and ventilation conditions contributed to the spread. Settler medical professionals believed the “Indian TB,” as they called it, was a strain that posed a threat to the settler population, misunderstanding at the time the process of immunity through exposure the settlers had, and the Indigenous populations’ lack of resistance to the disease brought unknowingly by settler carriers.

Indigenous patients had no choice but to stay in the hospitals, regardless of the treatment they received. The Indian Act was amended in 1953 to include the Indian Health Regulations that made it a crime for Indigenous people to refuse to see a doctor, to refuse to go to hospital, and to leave a hospital before discharge. The RCMP arrested patients and forcibly returned them to the hospital or sent them to jail. (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-hospitals-in-canada)

The hospitals themselves, Indigenous health expert Yvonne Boyer said, are just one piece of the puzzle. The bigger issue is the deeply entrenched theory that Indigenous people are “inferior” and incapable of making their own health decisions, a notion Boyer said permeates Canadian legislation and policies to this day. As an Ottawa-based lawyer whose aunt spent a decade in a tuberculosis sanatorium in Fort Qu’appelle, Boyer believes there should be a complete structural overhaul of the health system. She feels there should be immediate changes to ensure there are more Indigenous people in positions of power and training to ensure all health-care providers understand the needs of First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities.

Dawn Martin-Hill, one of the founders of McMaster University’s Indigenous studies program, said systemic racism has led Indigenous people today to distrust modern, western health care. The lingering effects of the ‘Indian hospitals’ and tuberculosis sanatoriums is that health care was something to be feared, rather than something that could heal.

The federal government says it hopes to continue increasing First Nations’ control of the health-care system and improve integration with provincial systems.

Carol Baldwin,
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Wakaw Recorder