kids at residential schools used as test subjects

the discovery of hundreds of children’s remains in  kamloops ,  brandon  and  cowessess  have exposed the absolute devastation settlers inflicted upon indigenous children, families and communities through the indian residential school system.

as a nutrition researcher, and settler-canadian, i am calling on my peers to recognize and understand the harms that  malnutrition and nutrition experiments on indigenous people  have caused and the legacy they have left.

easier to assimilate

ian mosby, historian of food, indigenous health and the politics of canadian settler colonialism, uncovered that  between 1942 and 1952, canada’s most prominent nutrition scientists performed highly unethical research  on 1,300 indigenous people, including 1,000 children, in cree communities in northern manitoba and at six residential schools across canada.

many were  already suffering from malnutrition  because of destructive government policies and terrible conditions at residential schools.

frederick tisdall — famous for being a  co-creator of the infant food pablum at the hospital for sick children in toronto  — along with percy moore and lionel bradley pett were the main architects of the nutrition experiments.

they proposed that education and dietary interventions would  make indigenous people more profitable assets to canada , that if indigenous people were healthier,  transmission of diseases like tuberculosis to white people  would decline and assimilation would be easier.

tisdall, moore and their team based their pitch on the results they found after  subjecting 400 cree adults and children in northern manitoba  to a range of intrusive assessments, including physical exams, x–rays and blood draws.

the pitch from pett and his team centred on determining a baseline. they wanted to give children at the  alberni indian residential school a low amount of milk for two years , enough to substantially deprive growing children of the calories and nutrients they needed.

other experiments involved withholding essential vitamins and minerals to children in control groups, while  preventing indian health services from providing dental care  under the guise that this could impact the study results.

and even before these experiments,  children at indian residential schools were going hungry  — with reports of severe malnutrition and signs of serious vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

motives and racial underpinnings of the nutrition experiments

interest in nutrition research rose dramatically in the 1940s after the canadian council on nutrition stated publicly that  more than 60 per cent of people in canada had nutritional deficiencies .

most experiments up to then had been done in animals, but researchers like pett, who was the  main author of what later became canada’s food guide , capitalized on the opportunity to use indigenous people as lab rats.

investigators sought to unravel the “indian problem.” moore, tisdall and their collaborators attributed discriminatory stereotypes like “ shiftlessness, indolence, improvidence and inertia ” to malnutrition.

a.e. caldwell, principal of alberni indian residential school, claimed  the malnutrition was caused by traditional diets and ways of living , which he also called “indolent habits.” the nutrition experiments, alongside the profoundly inadequate and low-quality foods given to children in residential schools, aligned perfectly with caldwell’s mandate of assimilation.

barring virtually all children from adequate traditional foods is yet  another means of colonization and cultural genocide .

the aftermath of  the holocaust and the biomedical experiments  in concentration camps led to the  development of the nuremberg code  in 1947, which states that voluntary consent for research is absolutely essential and that experiments should avoid all unnecessary mental and physical suffering.

consequences of malnutrition and experimentation

the  truth and reconciliation commission’s final report  indicates that the main causes of death in children at residential schools were physical harm, malnutrition, illness and neglect.

for residential school survivors, malnutrition has lasting effects. starvation during childhood increases risk of chronic conditions  like type 2 diabetes , and research indicates that severe malnutrition may even cause  epigenetic changes   that can be passed on through generations .

food insecurity and nutrition problems in indigenous communities  are major issues in canada, resulting from residential schools and colonial policies that continue to this day.

experiments at residential schools and in communities have made  health care settings precarious and traumatic places for many indigenous peoples  and have led to a degree of  vaccine hesitancy during the covid-19 pandemic . at the same time, stigma, violence and racism towards indigenous peoples in these contexts persist.

this particular story of malnutrition and nutrition experiments on indigenous children and adults has been told before. it  caught mainstream media’s attention in 2013  after mosby’s research and advocacy.