Via The Globe and Mail, our own child-malnutrition horror story: Atleo calls on PM to acknowledge ‘horrors’ of nutrition tests on native children. Excerpt:
The head of Canada’s largest aboriginal group says Prime Minister Stephen Harper must acknowledge the “horrors” of nutritional experiments once done on hungry children by increasing support for native child welfare.
Shawn Atleo of the Assembly of First Nations said research showing that at least 1,300 already-hungry children and adults were part of the experiments was driving an emergency resolution at the organization’s annual meeting in Whitehorse on Wednesday.
“We’re going to call on the Prime Minister to give effect to the words that he spoke when he said: ‘The burden of this experience has been on your shoulders for far too long. The burden is properly ours as a government,’” Mr. Atleo said in reference to Mr. Harper’s 2008 apology for residential schools.
A paper by University of Guelph food historian Ian Mosby detailed tests conducted between 1942 and 1952 on northern Manitoba reserves and at six residential schools across the country.
Well aware that the children and adults were hungry and living on starvation-level diets, the researchers chose to use them as unwitting subjects for tests on the effects of nutritional supplements instead of recommending they be properly fed.
Mr. Mosby found that vitamins and minerals were provided to some and not to others. Milk rations at one school were deliberately held below recommended levels. An enriched flour that couldn’t legally be sold elsewhere in Canada under food adulteration laws was distributed. Some dental services were withheld from children over concerns that healthier gums and teeth could mask study results.
Mr. Atleo’s father was one of those children at a residential school in Port Alberni, B.C. “It hits home in a deeply personal way,” he said. “I’ve heard these stories – some kids allowed to have their oranges and vitamin Cs and others not. I’ve heard these stories all my life.”
