Health knowledge and its gatekeepers: exchanges of knowledge between Tsimshian and Euro-Canadian missionaries in nineteenth-century British Columbia

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• Phoebe McDonnell (King's College London)
• Monday 27 November 2023, 13:00-14:00
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Tom Banbury.

In nineteenth-century British Columbia, the process of colonization and the attempted elimination of traditional practices impacted greatly on how individuals understood health and medicine. Using the diaries of a Tsimshian man and irregular Indigenous missionary called Arthur Wellington Clah, we can see how health knowledge and disease events impacted the ways Indigenous individuals viewed and interacted with Euro-Canadian missionaries. As Clah navigated the rapidly changing world around him, how he understood health changed in interesting ways. Using the seventy-two volumes of his diary, supplemented by the writings of Euro-Canadian missionaries in the region, we can trace the change over time of the ways in which all of these missionaries, Indigenous and Euro-Canadian alike, saw the world around them. This helps us to better understand the importance of the medical dimension of proselytization and its significance to the wider colonial project.

This talk is part of the Cabinet of Natural History series.

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