http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2672669073/
In this podcast, Ian Mosby (a food and nutrition historian) describes some of the experiments conducted upon Indigenous children in the residential school system. These are things which were exposed also by CBC rather than the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It’s also disturbing and shameful that these were experiments that happened after the conclusion of the Nuremberg war crimes trails, where Nazi doctors convicted of these crimes against humanity were imprisoned.
Some of these experiments led to the deaths of Indigenous children.
From the podcast: “I think if we really want to understand the mindset behind the residential school system, and also Canada’s…’Indian Policies.’ It was a dehumanization of Indigenous people. And they viewed indigenous people as somehow less than the rest of the Canadian population. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to watch students be so malnourished across the country—it wasn’t just the experimental schools where they were malnourished, it was across the country. And yet they stood idly by while generations of students had their health damaged by malnutrition.”
This would be too heavy a topic for primary students, but if done correctly could be integrated into secondary school curricula, and of course tertiary education.
Other resources:
Academic article from the podcast interviewee: https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/viewFile/40239/36424
CBC article on the topic: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/residential-school-nutrition-experiments-explained-to-kenora-survivors-1.3171557
Ear experiments done on residential school children: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/ear-experiments-done-on-kids-at-kenora-residential-school-1.1343992
“’We do know that there were research initiatives that were conducted with regard to medicines that were used ultimately to treat the Canadian population. Some of those medicines were tested in aboriginal communities and residential schools before they were utilized publicly.’
Sinclair said some of those medicines developed were then withheld from the same aboriginal children they were originally tested on.” (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/aboriginal-children-used-in-medical-tests-commissioner-says-1.1318150)