When Disease Came to This Country: Epidemics and Colonialism in Northern North America

ISBN-13: 9781009320870 / Angielski

Liza Piper

Opis

A revisionist history of epidemic disease as experienced by northern Indigenous peoples in present day Canada's Yukon and Northwest Territories between 1860 and 1940. Liza Piper connects the history of epidemics in northern North America to persistent health disparities arising from settler colonialism.

Recenzje

'An impressively researched work, drawing from a rich variety of settler colonial and Indigenous sources, Piper transforms our understanding of the epidemic landscape under colonialism in northern Canada, into the mid-20th century. Re-examining historiographical claims about Indigenous de-population, de-centring diseases that loom large in the literature (particularly smallpox), and giving a new timeline for the devasting impact of influenza in the north over multiple epidemics, she insists on the value of local and community perspectives that correct and complicate simplified narratives of Indigenous mortality. When Disease Came to this Country is not easy in many ways, and does not soften the impact of unjust and inequitable colonial relations on Indigenous health and healing. Yet through Piper's careful attention to disease interactions and the importance of time, place, and the land, readers understand more fully the diversity of Indigenous experience, disease in Indigenous oral traditions and identities, and Indigenous resilience and persistence.' Esyllt Jones, University of Manitoba

Spis treści

1. Introduction; 2. When scarlet fever came to this country; 3. Colonial motifs and medicine; 4. The gold rush and after; 5. Infrastructures of extraction, sanitation, and care; 6. Race, gender, and control; 7. Experiences of influenza; 8. Colonial ecologies; 9. A smouldering fire; 10. Epilogue and conclusions; Appendix: Cause of death database.