Structures of Indifference

Structures of Indifference examines an Indigenous life and death in a Canadian city, and what it reveals about the ongoing history of colonialism. At the heart of this story is a thirty-four-hour period in September 2008. During that day and half, Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-Status Anishinaabeg resident of Manitoba's capital city, arrived in the emergency room of the Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg's major downtown hospital, was left untreated and unattended to, and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection. His death reflects a particular structure of indifference born of and maintained by colonialism.McCallum and Perry present the ways in which Sinclair, once erased and ignored, came to represent diffuse, yet singular and largely dehumanized ideas about Indigenous people, modernity, and decline in cities. This story tells us about ordinary indigeneity in the City of Winnipeg through Sinclair's experience and restores the complex humanity denied him in his interactions with Canadian health and legal systems, both before and afterhis death.Structures of Indifference completes the story left untold by the inquiry into Sinclair's death, the 2014 report of which omitted any consideration of underlying factors, including racism and systemic discrimination.

"One is to hope that this book is another nail in the coffin of colonialism's impact on Indigenous people in Canada."--Earl Waugh "The Canadian Journal of Native Studies", "Situates a global and pervasive history of dispossession and marginalization within a local and specific story of one Indigenous life."--G. Bruyere "CHOICE", "An accessible resource, providing undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, historians, and members of the general public a deep and careful study of what the life and death of one man can tell us about the deadly legacy and troubling contemporary prevalence of racism in the Canadian healthcare system."--Karen Ella McCallum "American Review of Canadian Studies", "In a Canadian hospital in 2008, an Indigenous man was left untreated and unattended for 34 hours and died of an easily treatable infection. A subsequent inquest wrestled with whether to examine systemic racism against Indigenous peoples as a contributing factor in Brian Sinclair's death, or to focus solely on operational or procedural failures. The historian-authors use inquest documents as their primary archive to analyze how legal processes narrowly define and interpret events to effectively obscure the violence of contemporary settler colonialism. The book situates a global and pervasive history of dispossession and marginalization within a local and specific story of one Indigenous life. McCallum and Perry argue that "health care is not only, and sometimes not even primarily about biomedicine--it is also about assimilation and integration into the Canadian nation state and the annulment of treaty rights and responsibilities, as well as erasure of Indigenous autonomy, identity and ways of life." A key success is that the authors never lose sight of Sinclair's complex humanity as a man and family member, and as an urban Indigenous community member within an institution, city, province, and country that too often dehumanizes and ignores Indigenous peoples."--G. Bruyere "CHOICE"

Adele Perry is a Professor of History at the University of Manitoba.Mary Jane Logan McCallum is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at University of Winnipeg.