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

by Mary Jane Logan McCallum (Author), Adele Perry (Author)

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.

Author Biography

MARY JANE LOGAN MCCALLUM is a Professor of History at the University of Winnipeg.
ADELE PERRY is a Professor is a Professor of History at the University of Manitoba.