Description
“Perhaps you are wondering why you are brought down from your home leaving your friends and perhaps family behind. The reason is that you are sick, and if you were left at home, you may endanger those at home. So you are here to get well again… But do not be afraid. Nobody here will harm you.”– Mountain Views, Hamilton Sanatorium, 1955
With this quote Shawn Selway begins his thorough investigation of the evacuation of 1,274 Inuit and Cree sufferers of tuberculosis from the Eastern Arctic to Mountain Sanatorium in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1950 to 1965. Selway considers not only the political culture, and the systemic racism within that culture, in which the decisions were made, but also the technological and economic changes that made these relocations possible. Selway carefully documents the impact of the evacuations on the Inuit community and has included an assortment of archival images within the book. This is an important look at a difficult time in our country’s history.
"For reconciliation to truly take place in this country, Canadians must come to terms with our twentieth-century colonial legacy. Shawn Selway’s book is a powerful step along the way. He unpacks the colonial mindset in the medical, bureaucratic and cultural views that led to the mass evacuation of Inuit people to southern tuberculosis sanatoriums in the 1950s. This book is nuanced, thoughtful and extremely well-researched. In reading this history I reflect on how the colonial constructs are still very much in place in terms of northern health and service delivery. Nobody Here Will Harm You is a powerful teaching tool in helping us rethink the relationship with Canada’s northern peoples." – Charlie Angus, author of Children of the Broken Treaty
With this quote Shawn Selway begins his thorough investigation of the evacuation of 1,274 Inuit and Cree sufferers of tuberculosis from the Eastern Arctic to Mountain Sanatorium in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1950 to 1965. Selway considers not only the political culture, and the systemic racism within that culture, in which the decisions were made, but also the technological and economic changes that made these relocations possible. Selway carefully documents the impact of the evacuations on the Inuit community and has included an assortment of archival images within the book. This is an important look at a difficult time in our country’s history.
"For reconciliation to truly take place in this country, Canadians must come to terms with our twentieth-century colonial legacy. Shawn Selway’s book is a powerful step along the way. He unpacks the colonial mindset in the medical, bureaucratic and cultural views that led to the mass evacuation of Inuit people to southern tuberculosis sanatoriums in the 1950s. This book is nuanced, thoughtful and extremely well-researched. In reading this history I reflect on how the colonial constructs are still very much in place in terms of northern health and service delivery. Nobody Here Will Harm You is a powerful teaching tool in helping us rethink the relationship with Canada’s northern peoples." – Charlie Angus, author of Children of the Broken Treaty