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People Worthy of Respect: Healthcare Disparities in Trans Canadians
Get PDFWhen people feel stigmatized, judged or bullied in a certain setting, it follows that they will avoid that setting as much as possible. Research shows this is exactly what is happening with trans people in Canada who require medical care. Despite being entitled to equal access to healthcare, trans Canadians frequently face stigma and discrimination which leads to unmet health needs. Consequently, they are less likely to seek care, even in the event of a medical emergency. This paper explores the reasons why trans Canadians are at greater risk for poor health, and examines possible solutions to this complex social problem. There are three distinct, but related, reasons why trans people face elevated risks. First, trans people suffer greater stigma and discrimination in their daily lives than does the general public; this places them at higher risk for mental illness, addictions, and high-risk behaviours. Secondly, the medical system and medical professionals have a history of discriminating against trans patients. Finally, as a result of stigma and discrimination, trans people are less likely to seek preventative care or care for non-life-threatening ailments than are members of the general public. These factors combine to create system of inequitable health care for trans Canadians. Solutions to these problems require that the healthcare system, and healthcare practitioners, first change the way that they view and treat trans patients: as people worthy of respect
SESSION 2.1: Archival Research for First Nations Communities: A Comprehensive Approach to BC Histories
No full textarchival research for First Nations in BC can be challenging. Working closely with communities is a necessity in this type of work. Besides community oral histories and knowledge, tracking down government and corporate correspondence, reports and other resources that support their Title & Rights requires patience and organization. An understanding of the histories of BC First Nations and those who ‘managed their affairs’, and ‘collected’ their artifacts and ethnographies is just a beginning. Even a small area of a larger First Nations territory can historically be represented in numerous provincial and federal ministry documents including Parks, Game Wardens, Fisheries, Railways and Highways. Many relevant items could also be in private or corporate collections. Piecing together the histories from a letter here, and a report there can be exciting work. Spending days going through numerous boxes and files in archives and not finding any relevant documentation is not unusual and takes a certain level of commitment and long-term vision. Maps and photographs, as well as oral histories also need to be viewed or listened to. In this presentation I will look at how historic documents in the Tete Jaune Cache area can support First Nations Title and Rights as well as enhance our understanding of this part of BC History. Histories in Tete Jaune Cache area, from between 1907 and 1917, reveal a time of upheaval for First Nations families that adds to our understanding of this decade. Linking First Nations histories with documents from multiple sources can expand our understanding of our province’s past and encourages a holistic approach to archival research
SESSION 2.1: Anxious at the Very Gates of Hell: Crime, Race and Community Identity on a North American Settlement Frontier, 1908-1925
No full textAnxious at the Very Gates of Hell: Crime, Race and Community Identity on a North American Settlement Frontier, 1908-1925 Dr. Jonathan Swainger, University of Northern British Columbia This research examines the intersection of various factors – race, class, notions about the frontier, crime and disorder, along with aspirations of creating a well-ordered community – revealed in the early crime history of Prince George, British Columbia, between 1908 and 1925. Central to this dynamic were ideals about ordered space in settled communities and who embodied the preferred residents of such places. In British Columbia’s northern interior, referred to as the Cariboo district, an anxious differentiation between the “old Cariboo” and the “new Cariboo” captured this contest. The distinction suggested that the latter community, with its preferred ordered space, would be free of alcohol, criminal excess and violence, and peopled with law-abiding Christians as one manifestation of the largely unquestioned assumption of White superiority in Canada. Guilty of overstating the character of community life at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser Rivers, Reverend Melville Wright’s claim that his congregation existed near “the very gates of hell” suggested that links to the old Cariboo, with its mixed population, liquor, and its riotous approach to life, remained troubling and persistent, despite efforts to fashion the preferred identity
SESSION 1.1: The Difficulty of Daffodils: Examining Japanese-Canadian Dispossession beyond Property Loss
No full textThis paper traces the history of the daffodil in the Fraser Valley both as a technology of settler colonialism and as revealing the fallibility of settler-colonial property logics in the context of the dispossession of Japanese-Canadians. Interrogating daffodils in the everyday prompts understandings of historical violence beyond property loss alone
SESSION 1.2: Remembering Forward
No full textDevelopment in British Columbia has and continues to operate within an extractivist, colonial framework with little regard to environmental or community impacts. In 1952, the Cheslatta T’En were forcibly removed from their homelands for Alcan’s Kenney Dam. Because of the frequent flooding of Nechako Reservoir, the Cheslatta live in constant tension with a permanently changed landscape as the bones of their ancestors and memories of their way of life continues to wash ashore. The coordinated and intentional efforts of Alcan and the Department of Indian Affairs to remove all material traces of the Cheslatta from their lands had devastating impacts that reach into their ancestral past, continue in the present, and shape Cheslatta’s collective action for a more just future. The Cheslatta’s memories of their lands and forced displacement are the traces that Alcan and the settler state could not erase. Today, with approximately 140 band members resettled onto 8 different reserves, scattered across over 170 miles, the Cheslatta struggle to reclaim their heritage in a land and space disconnected from what had been their homelands for thousands of years. Through an ethnohistorical and ethnographic analysis, I investigate the following: How are acts of resistance to displacement and dispossession informed by cultural meanings and memories of the land? What does resilience and agency look like on the ground, 66 years after dispossession and displacement? How do people come to grips with altered landscapes
A Duty to Report: Alternative Journalism as Political Obligation to Resist and Remedy Injustice
Get PDFTraditional media tenets of objectivity and impartiality have led to amoral and passive journalistic practices, which reinforce problematic status quos and allow inequality to flourish. Journalists ought to utilize their positions of power in democratic societies to address and rectify injustice through responsible reporting practices. This argument is supported with a theory on political obligation and duty by philosopher Candice Delmas, who argues that obeying the law in just states validates a duty to disobey the law in unjust states which infringe on citizen rights. Journalists have the ability to adequately fulfill this duty; however, this is not always acted upon due to the limitations of journalistic objectivity. Alternative forms of journalism are identified as approaches by which journalists may accomplish their duty to resist injustice. Alternative journalism places a greater emphasis on social responsibility and community building and are better models for journalists to achieve ideal media practices to improve societies and challenge injustice
SESSION 3.1: “Low Modernism” in the Wenner-Gren British Columbia Project, 1956-61
No full textJames C. Scott\u27s notion of “high modernism” has been recently been deployed, and critiqued, in accounts of BC Hydro and Power Authority\u27s planning and construction of the Bennett Dam. This paper offers “low modernism” as a more accurate descriptor of the activities of Hydro\u27s predecessor concern, the Wenner-Gren (BC) Development Company (WGBC), and its offshoot, Peace River Power Development Company. An examination of scattered managerial correspondence in Swedish reveals that while WGBC leaders rehearsed platitudes about scientific progress and development for press conferences and newspapers, they were more concerned, indeed, obsessed with acquiring funds to cover the increasingly frequent loan calls on a growing debt for previous expenditures. James Willard Hurst\u27s venerable notion of bastard pragmatism better describes the activities of the predecessor company
