The healing work and nursing care of Aboriginal women, female medical missionaries, nursing sisters, public health nurses, and female attendants in southern Alberta First Nations communities, 1880–1930

This dissertation looks at the provision of healthcare services by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal women in southern Alberta First Nations communities from 1880-1930. It considers the healing work undertaken by Blackfoot, Blood, Peigan, Nakoda, and Tsuu T'ina women. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries First Nations women made their obstetrical and botanical knowledge available to European-Canadian women living in southern Alberta. From the late 1870s, female missionaries of various denominations made medical and nursing care part of their mission work. After 1890 churches and their missionary organizations established hospitals, school infirmaries, and dispensaries to address ill-health in Native communities. These facilities were run by European-Canadian women with varying degrees of skill. The early twentieth century saw the growing involvement of the federal state in health regimes on Treaty 7 reserves. After 1915 public health nurses and matrons, working for the Indian Health Services (IHS) branch of the Department of Indian Affairs (DIA), increasingly took over the medical work of missionaries. This transition introduced a new clinical model of healthcare and altered the nature of the relationship between practitioners and patients. By looking at women's healing work in southern Alberta this project addresses the gender specific nature of women's therapeutic labour and knowledge in Treaty 7 communities, the importance of European-Canadian women in establishing and running healthcare services on reserves, and the role of healthcare as a contact zone where First Nations and European-Canadian women met.