Samir Shaheen-Hussain - Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada

Heartbroken. This is how I feel after reading Fighting for a Hand to Hold. It hurts to read about children suffering. Shaheen-Hussains book does not relieve that pain. Yet his words hold the potential to help us create broader healing, if his insights are heeded. JOHN BORROWS, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law, University of Victoria Law School

A sick child is transported by plane to a hospital 1,000 kilometres away, alone, without a parent: a state practice without pity. This practice was no mere residue of an old colonial system long gone. Instead it is a telling sign of an ongoing settler colonialism, one deeply structured to disappear Indians and to declare Indigenous lives to be worth less than white ones. Samir Shaheen-Hussains clear-eyed account reminds us that we can change but not until we recognize this ugly truth.

SHERENE H. RAZACK, distinguished professor and Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Gender Studies, UCLA, and author of Dying from Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries into Indigenous Deaths in Custody

In Fighting for a Hand to Hold Samir Shaheen-Hussain exposes the social, cultural, and historical structures that allow medical colonialism to hide in plain sight as it harms generations of Indigenous children and their families. It is an unflinching analysis that should be required reading in every medical school in the country.

MAUREEN LUX, professor, Brock University, and author of Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada, 1920s1980s

Shaheen-Hussain argues that genuine reconciliation cant occur without reparations and restitution. Besides disclosure and acknowledgment of the harm done, this means a genuine demonstration of sorrow and regret, a promise to never do harm again, and action that ensures the harm will not be repeated. This book should be read by anyone who wants to meaningfully enter into reconciliation with Indigenous people.

MARIE WADDEN, author of Where the Pavement Ends: Canadas Aboriginal Recovery Movement and the Urgent Need for Reconciliation

Its clever framing, detailed research, and frequent critical gems put Fighting for a Hand to Hold in the very good company of a small group of stellar books and articles about Indigenous health issues, all of them manifestos for change. Its a passionate and informed report from the medical frontlines that exposes some of the social determinants and racial subtexts that prevent us from improving and safeguarding the lives of Indigenous peoples and other minorities in Canada.

GARY GEDDES, author of Medicine Unbundled: A Journey through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care

Samir Shaheen-Hussains Fighting for a Hand to Hold is a searing indictment of medical colonialism in Canada. This must-read book shatters the myth of universal and equitable healthcare as a pillar of this countrys benevolent social democracy and forcefully exposes the active involvement of the medical system in upholding historic and ongoing settler-colonial power.

HARSHA WALIA, author of Undoing Border Imperialism

FIGHTING
FOR A
HAND
TO HOLD

McGill-Queens Indigenous and Northern Studies
(In memory of Bruce G. Trigger)
JOHN BORROWS, SARAH CARTER, AND ARTHUR J. RAY, EDITORS

The McGill-Queens Indigenous and Northern Studies series publishes books about Indigenous peoples in all parts of the northern world. It includes original scholarship on their histories, archaeology, laws, cultures, governance, and traditions. Works in the series also explore the history and geography of the North, where travel, the natural environment, and the relationship to land continue to shape life in particular and important ways. Its mandate is to advance understanding of the political, legal, and social relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, of the contemporary issues that Indigenous peoples face as a result of environmental and economic change, and of social justice, including the work of reconciliation in Canada. To provide a global perspective, the series welcomes books on regions and communities from across the Arctic and Subarctic circumpolar zones.

1 When the Whalers Were Up North Inuit Memories from the Eastern Arctic
Dorothy Harley Eber

2 The Challenge of Arctic Shipping Science, Environmental Assessment, and Human Values
Edited by David L. VanderZwaag and Cynthia Lamson

3 Lost Harvests Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy
Sarah Carter

4 Native Liberty, Crown Sovereignty The Existing Aboriginal Right of Self-Government in Canada
Bruce Clark

5 Unravelling the Franklin Mystery Inuit Testimony
David C. Woodman

6 Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 17851841
James R. Gibson

7 From Wooden Ploughs to Welfare The Story of the Western Reserves
Helen Buckley

8 In Business for Ourselves Northern Entrepreneurs
Wanda A. Wuttunee

9 For an Amerindian Autohistory An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic
Georges E. Sioui

10 Strangers Among Us
David Woodman

11 When the North Was Red Aboriginal Education in Soviet Siberia
Dennis A. Bartels and Alice L. Bartels

12 From Talking Chiefs to a Native Corporate Elite The Birth of Class and Nationalism among Canadian Inuit
Marybelle Mitchell

13 Cold Comfort My Love Affair with the Arctic
Graham W. Rowley

14 The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7
Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal Council with Walter Hildebrandt, Dorothy First Rider, and Sarah Carter

15 This Distant and Unsurveyed Country A Womans Winter at Baffin Island, 18571858
W. Gillies Ross

16 Images of Justice
Dorothy Harley Eber

17 Capturing Women The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canadas Prairie West
Sarah Carter

18 Social and Environmental Impacts of the James Bay Hydroelectric Project
Edited by James F. Hornig

19 Saqiyuq Stories from the Lives of Three Inuit Women
Nancy Wachowich in collaboration with Apphia Agalakti Awa, Rhoda Kaukjak Katsak, and Sandra Pikujak Katsak

20 Justice in Paradise
Bruce Clark

21 Aboriginal Rights and Self-Government The Canadian and Mexican Experience in North American Perspective
Edited by Curtis Cook and Juan D. Lindau

22 Harvest of Souls The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 16321650
Carole Blackburn

23 Bounty and Benevolence A History of Saskatchewan Treaties
Arthur J. Ray, Jim Miller, and Frank Tough

24 The People of Denendeh Ethnohistory of the Indians of Canadas Northwest Territories
June Helm

25 The Marshall Decision and Native Rights
Ken Coates

26 The Flying Tiger Women Shamans and Storytellers of the Amur
Kira Van Deusen

27 Alone in Silence European Women in the Canadian North before 1940
Barbara E. Kelcey

28 The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher An Elizabethan Adventure
Robert McGhee

29 Northern Experience and the Myths of Canadian Culture
Rene Hulan

30 The White Mans Gonna Getcha The Colonial Challenge to the Crees in Quebec
Toby Morantz

31 The Heavens Are Changing Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity
Susan Neylan

32 Arctic Migrants/Arctic Villagers The Transformation of Inuit Settlement in the Central Arctic
David Damas

33 Arctic Justice On Trial for Murder Pond Inlet, 1923
Shelagh D. Grant