A new book co-authored by UWinnipeg history professor Mary Jane Logan McCallum and University of Manitoba history professor Adele Perry examines the story of Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-Status Anishinaabeg resident of Winnipeg, who arrived in the emergency room of a major downtown hospital in 2008 — and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection after he was left untreated and unattended to over a 34-hour period.
In Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City, 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.
Webinar With The Authors
A webinar that will engage the two authors on their new book will be co-hosted by the National Collaborating Centres for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP) and Aboriginal Health (NCCAH).Participants will learn about the events that led to the 2008 death of Brian Sinclair; reflect upon how Sinclair’s life and death were shaped by the history of colonialism and health care in Winnipeg and Canada; and consider the structural and systemic anti-Indigenous racism that led to Sinclair’s death and shaped responses to it.
The webinar will take place on Friday, September 21 from 12:00 – 1:30 pm (CT). Click here to register.
Book Launch Event
A book launch will be held at McNally Robinson (1120 Grant Avenue) on Friday, September 21 at 7:00 pm. The event will feature guests Roberta Stout, a research associate with the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health, and Barry Lavallee, a faculty member of the First Nations Métis and Inuit Health Section, Faculty of Medicine, University of Manitoba.
About The Authors
Mary Jane Logan McCallum, of the Munsee Delaware Nation, is a professor in the Department of History, University of Winnipeg and is the author of Indigenous Women, Work, and History, 1940–1980.
Adele Perry is a Professor of History at the University of Manitoba. She is the author of Aqueduct: Colonialism, Resources, and the Histories We Remember.
