Indigenous communities are vulnerable in times of pandemic. We must not ignore them – The Globe and Mail
John Borrows is Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Victoria Law School writing with Constance MacIntosh, Viscount Bennett Professor of Law at Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University
My mother lives on a beautiful reserve on the shores of Georgian Bay in Southern Ontario. She is 84 and an elder in our community. Limestone escarpments rise over the quiet forests outside her window. Cold blue waters wash the fossil-strewn shores outside her door. After a long winter she is thrilled to welcome the birds back home. She is surrounded by love and she always offers a kind word of encouragement for anyone who visits her home.
My mother also lives with trauma. Tuberculosis scarred her childhood. Her father spent 10 years quarantined in a sanitarium from the age of 7 onward. Her sister died of tubercular meningitis in her 20s. Viruses have killed friends and family in numbers on the reserve in far greater than in other populations in Canada in her lifetime – as is the case in many Indigenous communities across the land. She is the latest generation to experience the trauma of infectious diseases, from the Spanish Flu to smallpox, which have hit our communities in hard ways.
