“Years ago”: reconciliation and First Nations narratives of tuberculosis in the Canadian Prairie Provinces

Abstract

For First Nations tuberculosis (TB) patients in the Prairie Provinces, the past matters. In this paper, we draw on the analysis of historical statements made by 20 First Nations interviewees with infectious TB to explore the function of talking about the past in relation to a current diagnosis of TB and the implications of historicity on contemporary TB prevention, programming and care. Despite interviewees not being asked directly about past contexts of TB treatment, they talked about historical topics such as the removal of First Nations TB patients from communities for treatment in distant sanatoria, painful and invasive surgical procedures once used to treat TB, and the attitudes that persist due to the ongoing failure to eliminate TB from First Nations communities. In these narratives, past experiences of TB treatment are intimately connected to present-day experiences and context. What happened ‘years ago’ profoundly affects the health and well-being of people diagnosed with TB today. Attempts to eliminate TB among First Nations peoples in Canada must also address its historical legacy. Understanding the contemporary effects of past TB treatment and mistreatment among First Nations peoples in the Prairie Provinces can also be seen as part of a larger project of truth and reconciliation in Canada, which involves both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.

Keywords:

• Canada
• Indigenous health research
• tuberculosis
• personal narratives
• colonialism
• historical context
• reconciliation
• historicity

Acknowledgements

A sincere thank you to all of the participants who shared their experiences of TB with us. We gratefully acknowledge the work of the entire data collection and analysis team for the Determinants of Tuberculosis Transmission Project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The Determinants of Tuberculosis Transmission Project was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Canada (CIHR) and Health Canada [grant number #151631]. This research was also supported by a CIHR Population Health Intervention Research (PHIR) ‘Informing the Strategy against Tuberculosis for First Nations on-Reserve: Evidence from the DTT Project (2012)’ [grant number #297723].