Tradition and contrition

In the name of reconciliation, Canadian medicine has embraced pseudoscience

By Anonymed (an anonymous Canadian Doctor)

In 1883, the Canadian government passed an amendment to the nascent Indian Act banning the practice of Potlatch. Unique to the Indigenous Peoples of modern day Canada and the United States, this traditional ceremony involved the redistribution (and sometimes destruction) of goods and property as a means of demonstrating or conferring social status. According to historians, it had both political and spiritual functions, and was just one of many traditional Indigenous practices pushed to the margins by European expansion in the New World. The ban remained on the books until 1951, by which time decades of assimilationist policy and Christian proselytism had muddied the definition of what constituted traditional Indigenous practices.

Things have changed a bit since COVID, but when I started medical school, it was controversial to be too hard on the profession’s pseudoscientific cousins. In those days, before we were united in contempt for the unvaccinated and ivermectin enthusiasts among us, the profession had opened itself up to all manner of dubious dalliance with the purveyors of “complementary and alternative medicine.” Medical students were sent to “shadow” naturopaths and chiropractors to learn about what they do, or, more accurately, don’t do (students at one Ontario medical school were sent to a clinic specializing in therapeutic colon-cleansing (which is exactly what it sounds like) only for the place to be shut down over, um, unsanitary conditions); in 2015, the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine launched a collaboration with the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CCCM) to work on…collaborations; medical schools across the country created and defended institutes for “Integrative Health”, a term about as well-formed as fog; and, as if they weren’t already compromised enough by the pool of woke applicants on offer, they started admitting actual and unrepentant homeopaths, naturopaths and chiropractors into their ranks. Bollocks on stilts, as the English would say.

Accompanying this flirtation with non-Indigenous pseudoscience was an increasing infatuation with what is now generally referred to as “Traditional Medicine.” In the post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) world, Canadian medicine was conjoined with “traditional ways of knowing”, which, as we will see, are lacking in…err…traditional definition. Recommendation #22 of the TRC states: “We call upon those who can effect change within the Canadian health-care system to recognize the value of Aboriginal healing practices and use them in the treatment of Aboriginal patients in collaboration with Aboriginal healers and Elders where requested by Aboriginal patients.” (NB. The TRC findings were published before the term “Aboriginal” became taboo).

On the ground, the embrace of such edicts meant forcing medical students to drink from a firehose of cliches and stereotypes. Foods like moose meat and berries and (even) bannock were treated like magic foods; Elders were invited to campuses to teach about the “four medicines” (tobacco, sage, cedar, and sweetgrass) and the medicine wheel (which, we were told, reflects the fact that citizens of earth are either black, white, red or yellow); prayer was once again permitted at meetings and graduations (as long as someone burned something or banged a drum of course); and students were consistently reminded that medicine’s failings vis-a-vis “Indigenous health” were in large part a result of the failure of us white settlers to understand the ethereal quality of all things “Traditional.” All of this, needless to say, was considered beyond contestation - by definition.

Unfortunately, such tokenistic gestures were just the beginning. Some Canadian medical schools have since created Research Chairs for the study of Traditional Medicine. Toronto Metropolitan University (which, mercifully, has yet to secure a medical school) created a tenure-track teaching position in “Indigenous science” whose prerequisites included a PhD in “western or Indigenous science”. In 2021, one of the nation’s “big-three” grant institutions awarded researchers $1.2 million to study the effects of colonialism on cancer. The list goes on. 

Admittedly, criticizing the onslaught of such identity-driven pseudoscience is complicated by the fact that our colonial predecessors were the victors in an unpretty struggle for sovereignty of the New World and its native inhabitants. No one educated in the postmodern era needs reminding that colonialism was not an event, but a process. Disease and violence were at times policy-adjacent and Indigenous ways of understanding the world were spit on and, as with the Potlatch, outlawed. The Indian residential school system was not taught in my parents' history class, quite possibly because it was not yet history (the last official school didn't close until the 1990s). Canada’s early governments made mistakes - bad ones. But as time passes, it seems they have made another in their attempt to fully-atone for the country’s past sins. Admitting legitimate dishonour can unfortunately pave the way for further dishonour once it is up to others to decide how and for how long we descendants of the usurpers must prostrate ourselves. As a result, Canadians are now expected to live with a perpetual posture of recompense with no end in sight. 

Distinguishing legitimate historical grievances from opportunistic revisionism isn't easy given the stakes (and emotions) involved. Honest interlocutors are hard to come by, and Canada’s political polarization has only made things worse. As conservative voice Jonathan Kay once put it, “the Canadian left honours Indigenous people more as noble savage protest mascots than as flesh-and-blood humans with real economic needs.” Regardless, hysterics about genocide and “mass graves” aside, it is difficult to deny that post-contact, Indigenous peoples often lived wretched lives, irrespective of residential schools and the Indian Act and all the other colonial party favours. It is true that at that point in history, all people got sick and died from diseases we now associate only with the Third World (and, sadly, remote reserves), but it is also true that Indigenous peoples were especially mistreated, impoverished, isolated and immunologically and culturally ill-equipped to deal with a massive upheaval of their way of life.

This is all a tragedy of course, and it remains to be seen whether or not true reconciliation is even possible given how wide the chasm of mistrust. An additional problem for us as physicians is that Western chauvinism and Western medicine often worked hand in glove. In medical school I wrote a paper about the Canadian government's use, with cooperation from the medical community of the day, of poverty-ravaged reservations for experiments in regards to novel nutritional supplements (instead of, you know, sending some food). Many in our profession believed that Indigenous "listlessness" could be treated, rarely with what we would call informed consent. And while Europeans were using reservations as de facto laboratories, Indigenous traditional medicine and rituals were disparaged. The dual insult of taking away peoples' own medicine while pushing a foreign replacement in unethical ways would be enough to make anyone skeptical.

It is in the shadow of this mistreatment that traditional medicine now receives special consideration in the name of “Indigenization.” Given what Indigenous communities have been through, I suppose one could rationalize some kind of olive branch. The problem is, no one, including it seems many Indigenous peoples, know what traditional medicine actually is. It turns out this has real consequences.

The folly of identity-based medical care (and identity-based rights) is best illustrated by two well-known and nearly identical cases. Both involved young Indigenous girls from southern Ontario. Both involved a diagnosis of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). And both involved a place known, ironically, as The Hippocrates Institute. In 2014-15, Makayla Sault and J.J (anonymized due to a court order) were diagnosed with slightly different variants of this horrible disease. Each had a high probability of cure if given chemotherapy. Both declined (as did their parents), asserting that their decision to pursue traditional healing methods was constitutionally protected. A judge ruled in both their favours. Sault died a few months later. J.J. ultimately completed chemotherapy after a relapse and, as far as I know, is alive and well.

As my dad is wont to say about food he doesn't like, this is interesting, and for two reasons. The first is that it turns a theoretical separateness of one group of citizens (based on an understanding of real historical wrongs) into a very real separateness that has life and death consequences. Recall that at the same time legal minds in Ontario were telling doctors to keep their colonialist hands off eleven-year-old cancer patients, Alberta's cloaked arbiters were convicting David and Collet Stephan, two alt-med proponents, of negligence in the death of their young son after they decided to treat him with "home remedies" for what turned out to be bacterial meningitis.* Say what you will about the mindset of these individuals (who, though ultimately acquitted, seem to have shown little remorse for their actions) but at least it was debatable whether or not they understood just how dangerous their son's condition really was. And, crucially, when he became critically ill they brought him to the emergency department. Contrast this with the conscious decision of the aforementioned Indigenous mothers to knowingly endanger their children and one might be forgiven for concluding that as part of our penance for colonialism our society has decided to let Indigenous parents criminally neglect their own children. Had Makayla Sault been a member of any other community, she would likely be alive.

The second reason these cases taste a little funny is that these young patients’ so-called "traditional healing" regimen was, in effect, whatever their mothers decided it would be. Not that it would have made a single sliver of difference medically, but they didn't exactly seek out their tribe's most talented medicine men. They didn't scour what exists of her community's historical record in search of applicable healing techniques. No, they sent them to Florida (admittedly known for curing Vitamin D deficiency in Canadian octogenarians) and the Hippocrates Health Institute, where they received IV Vitamin infusions, (transintestinal?) raw diet therapy, and (concentrated?) positive attitude counselling. I'm no expert, but what about that sounds like traditional medicine? It's certainly not checking off any of my stereotype boxes. There wasn't even a sweat lodge!

All parties involved should surely have known that "traditional medicine", like "alternative medicine", is a term so ill-defined as to mean nothing at all. Which again raises the question: what are we doing with a legal precedent like that other than conceding that our historical guilt - for the 60s Scoop, for Residential Schools, for the Indian Act, for boil-water advisories, for telling people their lands were forfeit, for intergenerational trauma - is so implacable that we will now stand aside while children die, colonialist tails between our white supremacist legs.

That was eight years ago. Ask yourself, has any of this racist pandering actually helped Indigenous peoples? Is this potentially deadly deference getting better or worse? With the narrative of a Canadian “genocide” stronger than ever, what hope is there that Canadian judges will stand up for the interests of the next Makayla Sault? To ask the question is to answer it. If this is what reconciliation looks like then count me out. 

___

Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, MAiD in Canada: A road to hell?

There are now two ways to support Woke Watch Canada through donations:

1) By subscribing to the paid version of the Woke Watch Canada Newsletter for - $5 USD/month or $50 USD/year

2) By donating to the Canadian School Board Investigation fund, which is raising money to expand Woke Watch Canada’s research and investigation into dysfunctional Canadian school boards.