Residential Science By Ian Mosby Summary

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This paper will review the article “Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952.” This article was published May of 2013 in the journal of Social History, and is written by Ian Mosby, who according to his website “is a historian of food, health and colonialism with a PhD from York University in Toronto, Ontario. His work has been featured in a wide range of both academic and non-academic publications.” This article summarizes the contents of Mosby’s article, it defines his main arguments, offers a critique and finally, analyzes its effectiveness in regards to the use of his sources. Mosby’s article analyzes three studies which took place …show more content…

Here the author explains how the dieticians of this time would investigate complaints of the food given to children within residential schools. These investigations consisted of visiting the facilities and examining the menus, taking a tour of the schools, and sometimes eating with the Schambach 3 children. As Mosby points out, there were problems with the idea of scheduled visitations, for example the schools would present better food during these visits that was normally given to the children. A doctor named Lionel Bradley Pett, started experimenting on students with the goal of examining malnutrition first hand as well as looking at the effects of a so called modern diet, which meant a diet consisting of mostly store bought foods. Here the researcher altered some of the children’s diet, such as increasing the milk supply, introducing supplements, and possibly the most damaging intervention was preventing dental services that would otherwise have been available to these …show more content…

And with this knowledge the government’s plan of action was to take the opportunity to experiment on these people as opposed to assisting in some way to end the crisis that was started when they first came here from Europe. Schambach 4 Although this author uses mainly primary research sources. These include testimonies of people who lived through and survived these events. Some examples of this would be Chief Andrew Crate Sr.’s testimony who describes the difficulty in obtaining food for his family or Basil H. Johnson, a survivor of residential schools, recollection of the school would serve more nutritious foods on days when inspectors would come. When Mosby’s article was published, it was noticed by the public and various news stations such as CTV news and the Winnipeg Free Press . The fact that an academic article was noticed by the general public speaks volumes to the general interest and outrage to the events that took place within Canadian residential

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