Overview

Twentieth-century circumpolar epidemics shaped historical interpretations of disease in European imperialism in the Americas and beyond. In this revisionist history of epidemic disease as experienced by northern peoples, Liza Piper illuminates the ecological, spatial, and colonial relationships that allowed diseases – influenza, measles, and tuberculosis in particular – to flourish between 1860 and 1940 along the Mackenzie and Yukon rivers. Making detailed use of Indigenous oral histories alongside English and French language archives and emphasising environmental alongside social and cultural factors, When Disease Came to this Country shows how colonial ideas about northern Indigenous immunity to disease were rooted in the racialized structures of colonialism that transformed northern Indigenous lives and lands, and shaped mid-twentieth century biomedical research.

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9781009320870

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'An impressively researched work, drawing from a rich variety of settler colonial and Indigenous sources, Piper transforms our understanding of the epidemic landscape under colonialism in northern Canada, into the mid-20th century. Re-examining historiographical claims about Indigenous de-population, de-centring diseases that loom large in the literature (particularly smallpox), and giving a new timeline for the devasting impact of influenza in the north over multiple epidemics, she insists on the value of local and community perspectives that correct and complicate simplified narratives of Indigenous mortality. When Disease Came to this Country is not easy in many ways, and does not soften the impact of unjust and inequitable colonial relations on Indigenous health and healing. Yet through Piper's careful attention to disease interactions and the importance of time, place, and the land, readers understand more fully the diversity of Indigenous experience, disease in Indigenous oral traditions and identities, and Indigenous resilience and persistence.' Esyllt Jones, University of Manitoba 'Often overlooked as an extension, or aberration of the South, Piper's examination of the epidemic disease in the Yukon and Mackenzie district deftly considers the past of the North in a way that reveals the many nuances histories that exist there.' Daniel Sims, Academic Co-lead of the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health 'Piper gives us a culturally sensitive and epidemiologically aware study of the complex interplay among people, power, and pathogens in Northwest Canada, ca. 1860-1945. Based on impressive primary research, and presented in pellucid prose, Piper's moving story is a powerful addition to the literature on disease and colonialism.' John McNeill, Georgetown University 'This sophisticated analysis of northern epidemics shatters longstanding academic assumptions about the immunological vulnerability of Indigenous populations in the region. In doing so it sets a new standard for understanding health and disease in the establishment of the settler colonial state on Indigenous lands. This is a vital and timely contribution to the Canadian project of reconciliation.' James Daschuk, University of Regina

Author Information

Liza Piper is Professor of History at the University of Alberta whose previous work includes The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada (2009).

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