Sterilizing the “Feeble‐minded”: Eugenics in Alberta, Canada, 1929–1972

Grekul, Jana; Krahn, Arvey; Odynak, Dave

doi:10.1111/j.1467-6443.2004.00237.x

Cited by 65 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In the 1970s, approximately 40 percent of Aboriginal women of childbearing age in the United States experienced non-consensual sterilization administered by the federally run Indian Health Services (Walters and Simoni 2002). This practice of eugenics also occurred here in Canada, although to a lesser degree and primarily in Alberta and British Columbia (Grekul, Krahn and Odynak 2004). More than 2,800 Aboriginal women underwent forced sterilization in Alberta alone between 1928and 1972(Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada 2001.…”

Section: Context Of the Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

Homelessness & Health in Canada

Guirguis-Younger¹,

Hwang²,

McNeil³

2014

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Section: Context Of the Researchmentioning

confidence: 98%

Homelessness & Health in Canada

Guirguis-Younger¹,

Hwang²,

McNeil³

2014

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“…Alberta, the province in which Michener Center was situated, instituted an involuntary sterilization programme under the Alberta Sterilization Act that operated between 1928 and 1972, sterilizing almost 3,000 people, most of them deemed to be mental defectives. During the years of the Act, the Superintendent of Michener Center was a standing member of the Eugenics Board, Board meetings were held quarterly on the Michener campus, and many Michener inmates were involuntarily sterilized [13,20,21] through the Board's routinized eugenic practices.…”

Section: Dehumanization Pollution and Hygienementioning

confidence: 99%

Bodily Practices as Vehicles for Dehumanization in an Institution for Mental Defectives

Malacrida

2012

Societies

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This article analyzes the processes of dehumanization that occurred in the Michener Center, a total institution for the purported care and training of people deemed to be mental defectives 1 that operated in Alberta, Canada. I report on qualitative interviews with 22 survivors, three ex-workers, and the institutional archival record, drawing out the ways that dehumanization was accomplished through bodily means and the construction of embodied otherness along several axes. First, inmates' bodies were erased or debased as unruly matter out of place that disturbed the order of rational modernity, a move that meant inmates were not seen as deserving or even requiring of normal human consideration. Spatial practices within the institution included panopticism and isolation, constructing inmates as not only docile but as unworthy of contact and interaction. Dehumanization was also seen as necessary to and facilitative of patient care; to produce inmates as subhuman permitted efficiency, but also neglect and abuse. Finally, practices of hygiene and sequestering the polluting bodies of those deemed mentally defective sustained and justified dehumanization. These practices had profound effects for inmates and also for those charged with caring for them.

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“…The eugenics movement ignobly initiated programmes of sterilization of the mentally ill and learning disabled (Cogdell 2006), and it is worth remembering that in the early decades of the 20th century such ideas and practices were a significant element of the scientific mainstream, influential in medicine, psychiatry and government. There is evidence that certain sterilization programmes and dubiously unethical and racialized research programmes were undertaken in modern western nations up to the 1970s (Dowbiggin 2003, Grekul et al. 2004).…”

Section: Race Racism and Discriminatory Practices In Mental Health Carementioning

confidence: 99%

Mental health care and resistance to fascism

McKeown

Mercer

2010

Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing

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Mental health nurses have a critical stake in resisting the right-wing ideology of British fascism.Particularly concerning is the contemporary effort of the British National Party (BNP) to gain credibility and electoral support by the strategic re-packaging of a racist and divisive political manifesto. Evidence that some public sector workers are affiliated with the BNP has relevance for nursing at a series of levels, not least the incompatibility of party membership with a requirement of the Professional Code to avoid discrimination. Progressive advances, though, need to account for deep rooted institutionalised racism in the discourse and practice of healthcare services. The anomalous treatment of black people within the mental health services, alongside racial abuse experienced by ethnic minority staff, is discussed in relation to the concept of race as a powerful social category and construction. The murder of the mentally ill and learning disabled in Nazi Germany, as an adjunct of racial genocide, is presented as an extreme example where professional ethics was undermined by dominant political ideology. Finally, the complicity of medical and nursing staff in the state sanctioned, bureaucratic, killing that characterised the Holocaust is revisited in the context of ethical repositioning for contemporary practice and praxis.Key words: mental health, political issues, ethics, ethnicity Accessible summary• The ideas and politics of British nationalism are highly topical at the moment. Issues of race and racism are key elements of this sort of fascist political movement. There are clear links between modern fascist parties and the wartime Nazis.

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Sterilizing the “Feeble‐minded”: Eugenics in Alberta, Canada, 1929–1972

Cited by 65 publications

References 19 publications

Homelessness & Health in Canada

Homelessness & Health in Canada

Bodily Practices as Vehicles for Dehumanization in an Institution for Mental Defectives

Mental health care and resistance to fascism

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