Institutionalized Racism in Canada: The Department of Indian Affairs and Framing Perspectives on Indigenous Peoples and Categorizations of Health

Abstract

This study centers on the role of the Canadian government in connection with indigenous communities and the causal factors of health and socio-economic disparity. The continuous process of indigenous subjugation under Canadian rule is analyzed through an interdisciplinary analysis of academic research from the fields of history, social and political science, postcolonial, and critical theory. The thesis’ objective is to uncover the covert racial predilections of Canadian government policy toward indigenous communities. This approach problematizes notions of postcolonialism and indigenous marginalization as a thing of the past, using a case study on TB related diseases among indigenous peoples and political perspectives. Results might increase awareness about the ways whiteness functions as a norm in institutional settings and how this explains the “backwards” position of indigenous peoples in Canadian society. Overall, this thesis exposes politics of recognition and reconciliation as renewed strategies of colonization and reaffirms ideas of structural genocide in the form of institutionalized racism.