Acknowledging the Most COVID-Vulnerable

"There have been some deceitful and terrible things that have been done to our communities historically."

"As far as I'm involved, things of that sort are never going to happen [again]."

Arlen Dumas, grand chief, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs

"The problem is trying to solve it [the history of medical experimentation imposed on First Nations by governments in Canada] in the middle of an emergency, in the middle of a pandemic, and trying to gain that trust."

"These solutions needed to start 20, 30, 50 years ago."

Ian Mosby, assistant professor, Ryerson University, Toronto

"It's not a game [trust of public health orders relating to vaccinations against COVID-19]."

"We need to take this serious[ly] and it is at a critical, critical junction."

Melanie MacKinnon, First Nations pandemic response team

Dr. James Makokis is a family physician in Kehewin First Nation. (Terry Reith/CBC)

 

The prairie provinces of Canada, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta are facing grim statistics in the number of COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths. And hardest hit and most vulnerable among their population groups are First Nations people. In Manitoba to date, 45 First Nations people have died from COVID-19, mostly in the last few weeks with the average age of death 66, as opposed to age 83 for the overall population in Manitoba. An aboriginal boy under ten years of age died last weekend. 

There is an aura of distrust among Indigenous people in Canada for the sincerity of politicians, government leaders and the medical community, born of long association with those leaders having imposed on aboriginal groups medical experiments of questionable and often harmful proportions. Now Aboriginal leaders are facing a dilemma of their own, as are those of the medical community in persuading First Nations peoples that it is in their best interests to agree to being inoculated against COVID.

 

A gymnasium in Shamattawa First Nation has been set up with cots as the Red Cross helps the fly-in community amid surging COVID-19 numbers. As of Friday, there are 1,815 active COVID-19 cases among First Nations people in Manitoba. (Submitted by Eric Redhead)

 

At the First Nations COVID-19 Pandemic Response Co-ordination Team's online update last week Grand Chief Dumas had his work cut out for him explaining to his audience that such vaccination plans are universal, to be received by everyone as a general response within the entire population to guard against continued outbreaks that can only be achieved through mass inoculation. Indigenous leaders, he stressed, would simply not permit the types of experiments of the past to be repeated.

Social media pages for Indigenous communities are rife with negative comments and concerns over     COVID vaccines. COVID-19 health advice appears to many as perhaps just another way that central governments are conspiring to do harm to their native populations. Grand Chief Dumas allowed as how mistrust has been earned from the Indigenous community. His own family members have expressed their concerns that COVID-19 vaccine will turn out to be yet another experiment special to First Nations.

In Canada's history of scientists sponsored by the federal government or the government itself being involved in medical experiments on Indigenous people, many examples can be found in the historical record. Professor Mosby's research reveals the presence of a government-operated food experiment on aboriginal children suffering from deliberately imposed malnutrition during the 1940s. Milk rations were withheld for two years in one residential school while in another a special flour illegal for human consumption in Canada was used to feed Aboriginal children.

In the 1930s, Indigenous children were exposed to a tuberculosis vaccine trial in Saskatchewan. Indian Hospitals, revealed by research, were created for the express purpose of treating Indigenous populations with tuberculosis where medical experimentation of all kinds was carried out, pointed out Professor Mosby. Of more recent vintage have been lawsuits revolving around the forced sterilization of Indigenous women, and skin grafts performed on Inuit people.

According to Indigenous Services Canada, several days back 4,069 COVID-19 cases were identified on Canadian reserves. Infections of Indigenous people living both on and off reserve have surged in recent weeks in Manitoba. More severe outcomes accrue to First Nations people, according to the response team's data. In Manitoba alone there were over 1,713 active cases on and off reserves.

All of which add to the need to inoculate people most vulnerable to the dread effects of the coronavirus as soon as possible. First Nations leaders themselves across Canada are advocating for priority status for their communities when the vaccine becomes available for distribution around the turn of the new year.

 

"First and foremost … we come from that inherent and treaty right aspect, that Treaty Right to Health. In there, there's what we call the Medicine Chest Clause. When our ancestors signed treaties in the eighteen and nineteen-hundreds, that guaranteed us health and medicine chest supplies and services." 

"Obviously, the priority is that First Nations people are going to be safe and taken care of and live a long, happy, healthy life."

"Our First Nations communities have higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, asthma and other health conditions that put them at an even higher risk of serious complications or even life-threatening problems if they contract COVID-19."

"These elders and vulnerable community members must be the first to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. Every day they go without this vaccine, their lives and the lives of their [community's] most vulnerable are at exceptional risk."

"We need the vaccine [sent] directly to us. We don't need anybody else to deliver it for us - we can do it. We have the capacity, we have the knowledge, we have the manpower, and we're ready. We're ready to deliver once the vaccines become available."    

Chief Bobby Cameron, Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations