"I believe the conditions are being deliberately created in our residential schools to spread infectious diseases... The mortality rate in the schools often exceeds fifty percent. This is a national crime."
Dr. Peter Bryce
The Story of a National Crime, 1907
" A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.
Peter Bryce, the department's chief medical officer, visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least 24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll reached 69 per cent."
Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings
"Doctor James Goodbrand sterilized many of our women... In 1952, when he heard I was going to marry a traditional chief, Goodbrand kept saying to me, "If you marry Freddie, I'll have to do an operation on you". That scared me and I tried to see another doctor, but the Indian Agent wouldn't let me. So when I gave birth to my daughter, it was Goodbrand who delivered her... After the birth, I hurt really bad and I kept bleeding. Then I learned that my tubes had been tied. He must have done it to me after the delivery when I was still unconscious. I heard Goodbrand say he was getting paid $300 by the government for every Indian woman he sterilized."
Sarah Modeste, Cowichan Nation, Vancouver Island
August 12, 2000
“My eldest son got the operation first, when he was four years old, in 1975. They came and got him when I wasn't home. Then in July of 1981 they sterilized by younger son. He was nine years old. They took him to the Victoria General Hospital and held him there for days. Neither of the boys can have kids now. They did that to them because our family are all blue bloods, the descendents of the original hereditary chiefs of this territory. The government is still trying to wipe us out.”
Names withheld by request
Vacouver Island, May 18, 2005
Dr. Peter Bryce
The Story of a National Crime, 1907
" A Globe and Mail examination of documents in the National Archives reveals that children continued to die from tuberculosis at alarming rates for at least four decades after a senior official at the Department of Indian Affairs initially warned in 1907 that schools were making no effort to separate healthy children from those sick with the highly contagious disease.
Peter Bryce, the department's chief medical officer, visited 15 Western Canadian residential schools and found at least 24 per cent of students had died from tuberculosis over a 14-year period. The report suggested the numbers could be higher, noting that in one school alone, the death toll reached 69 per cent."
Natives died in droves as Ottawa ignored warnings
"Doctor James Goodbrand sterilized many of our women... In 1952, when he heard I was going to marry a traditional chief, Goodbrand kept saying to me, "If you marry Freddie, I'll have to do an operation on you". That scared me and I tried to see another doctor, but the Indian Agent wouldn't let me. So when I gave birth to my daughter, it was Goodbrand who delivered her... After the birth, I hurt really bad and I kept bleeding. Then I learned that my tubes had been tied. He must have done it to me after the delivery when I was still unconscious. I heard Goodbrand say he was getting paid $300 by the government for every Indian woman he sterilized."
Sarah Modeste, Cowichan Nation, Vancouver Island
August 12, 2000
“My eldest son got the operation first, when he was four years old, in 1975. They came and got him when I wasn't home. Then in July of 1981 they sterilized by younger son. He was nine years old. They took him to the Victoria General Hospital and held him there for days. Neither of the boys can have kids now. They did that to them because our family are all blue bloods, the descendents of the original hereditary chiefs of this territory. The government is still trying to wipe us out.”
Names withheld by request
Vacouver Island, May 18, 2005
