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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Taking Medicine

Women’s Healing Work and Colonial Contact in Southern Alberta, 1880-1930

Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Taking Medicine

Women’s Healing Work and Colonial Contact in Southern Alberta, 1880-1930

Hunters, medicine men, and missionaries continue to dominate images and narratives of the West, even though historians have recognized women’s role as colonizer and colonized since the 1980s. Kristin Burnett helps to correct this imbalance by presenting colonial medicine as a gendered phenomenon. Although the imperial eye focused on medicine men, Aboriginal women in the Treaty 7 region served as healers and caregivers – to their own people and to settler society – until the advent of settler-run hospitals and nursing stations. By revealing Aboriginal and settler women’s contributions to health care, Taking Medicine challenges traditional understandings of colonial medicine in the contact zone.

248 pages | © 2010


Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Niitsitapi: The Northwestern Plains

2 Setting the Stage: Engendering the Therapeutic Culture of the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, Tsuu T’ina, and Nakoda

3 Giving Birth: Women’s Health Work and Western Settlement, 1850-1900

4 Converging Therapeutic Systems: Encounters between Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Women, 1870s-90s

5 Laying the Foundation: The Work of Nurses, Nursing Sisters, and Female Attendants on Reserves, 1890-1915

6 Taking over the System: Graduate Nurses, Nursing Sisters, Female Attendants, and Indian Health Services, 1915-30

7 The Snake and the Butterfly: Midwifery and Birth Control, 1900s-30s

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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