Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City

McCallum, Mary Jane Logan; Perry, Adele

ISBN 10: 0887558356 / ISBN 13: 9780887558351

Published by University of Manitoba Press, 2018

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 379980936

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City
• Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0887558356
• ISBN 13: 9780887558351
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

WINNER Indigenous History Book Prize, Canadian Historical Association (2019)
WINNER Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction, Manitoba Book Awards (2019)
WINNER AUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Show (Scholarly Typographic) (2019)

Structures of Indifference examines an Indigenous life and death in a Canadian city and what it reveals about the ongoing history of colonialism. In September 2008, Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-Status Anishinaabe resident of Winnipeg, arrived in the emergency room of a major downtown hospital. Over a thirty-four- hour period, he was left untreated and unattended to, and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection.

McCallum and Perry present the ways in which Sinclair, once erased and ignored, came to represent diffuse, yet singular and largely dehumanized ideas about Indigenous people, modernity, and decline in cities. This story tells us about ordinary indigeneity in the city of Winnipeg through Sinclair’s experience and restores the complex humanity denied him in his interactions with Canadian health and legal systems, both before and after his death.

About the Authors

Mary Jane Logan McCallum is a Professor in the Department of History at University of Winnipeg.

Adele Perry is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Manitoba.