Taken from Univerisity Paper
Residential Schools in Canada:
Truth be Told Appendex 10
"This skin infection, caused by the itch mite and usually found among children living in overcrowdedand unhygienic conditions, had been neglected or unrecognized and had plainly gone on for months.”
Colbot, a Regina, Saskatchewan physician commissioned by Scott in 1920 to survey the western boarding schools, went over the same ground Bryce had covered in 1907 and 1909…little had changed. The condition of one little girl found in the infirmary is pitiable indeed. She lies curled up in a bed that is filthy, in a room that is untidy, dirty and dilapidated, in the northwest corner of thebuilding with no provision of balcony, sunshine or fresh air. Both sides of her neck and chest are swollen and five foul ulcers are discovered when we lift the bandages. This gives her pain, and her tears from her fear of being touched, intensifies the picture of her misery (Milloy, 1999, p. 100).
Corbett also noted: “the hands and arms, and in fact the whole bodies of many of the children [were] covered with crusts and sores from this disgusting disease. Two of the girls [had] sores on the back of their heads full three inches across and heaped up with crusts nearly a half inch deep”…The remedy was simple cleanliness (Churchill, 2004, p. 41).
She was a really good friend. Tattooing your hands [was common]. And she done that, she used a
common pin or needle…and wrote her initials on her hand and then it got blood poising from the ink. Like her hand was swelling and swelling. Two or three days later…she started getting a fever. So she showed the nun and they just sent her to bed. And when she must have been in bed about two days…she was getting so she wasn’t even herself…And she just lay in bed and two days later she died ~(Churchill, 2004, p. 115).
Churchill, W. (2004). Kill The Indian Save The Man. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Milloy, J. (1999). A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System 1879
to 1986. Manitoba: The University of Manitoba Press.