BOOK TALK | Samir Shaheen-Hussain - Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism Against Indigenous Children in Canada

Part of the Montreal Atwater Library Lunchtime Series. To REGISTER and get the Zoom link, click here.

Join Pediatric emergency physician and writer Samir Shaheen-Hussain as he discusses his book Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism Against Indigenous Children in Canada, winner of two 2021 Quebec Writers’ Federation awards.

ABOUT THE BOOK

An exploration of anti-Indigenous systemic racism in Canadian health care and the medical establishment's role in colonial genocide.

Fighting for A Hand to Hold exposes the Canadian medical establishment’s role in the displacement, colonization, and genocide of Indigenous Peoples — colonial genocide. Through meticulously gathered government documentation, historical scholarship, media reports, public inquiries, and personal testimonies, Samir Shaheen-Hussain connects the draconian medevac practice with often-disregarded crimes committed against and medical violence inflicted upon Indigenous children across the country for more than a century and a half: fomented smallpox epidemics and avoidable tuberculosis deaths; experiments and abuse in residential schools, Indian Hospitals, reserves, and communities; forced sterilization; child abduction and disappearances.