Co-sponsored by the Department of Health Sciences.

The lecture will take place at 282 University Centre starting at 2:30pm, followed by a reception in the History Lounge (433PA).

About Dr. Lux:
Maureen Lux teaches history at Brock University. Her latest book, Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada, 1920s to 1980s was published earlier this year. She is currently collaborating on a book about reproductive politics in 1970s Canada.

Abstract:
Two enduring narratives mark the history of health care in Canada in the decades after 1945. Better known is Medicare: often told as a celebrated and progressive story of the path from a hardscrabble provincial plan to the definition of national health that improved health care for Canadians. The other, by contrast, chronicles the continued and continuing health disparities in many, though not all, Aboriginal communities and the seeming intractability of ill-health. I discuss how these contradictory and competing narratives emerged through an analysis of racially segregated hospital care that served the interests of non-Indigenous Canadians, and how Medicare, not the medicine chest, came to define health policy for First Nations people. I explore how it became normal and natural for Canadians to see these intertwined narratives as separate and distinct by examining Indian Health Services and its Indian Hospitals.