{"id":45852,"date":"2017-07-18T15:25:29","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T19:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=45852"},"modified":"2018-07-17T13:42:41","modified_gmt":"2018-07-17T17:42:41","slug":"brock-profs-honoured-for-work-on-aboriginal-womens-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2017\/07\/brock-profs-honoured-for-work-on-aboriginal-womens-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock profs honoured for work on aboriginal, women\u2019s history"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>Two Brock University professors are being lauded by national organizations for their work examining aboriginal and women\u2019s history.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Maureen Lux and Carmela Patrias, both of Brock\u2019s Department of History, were celebrated during the annual Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences held at Ryerson University at the end of May.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lux was recognized by the Canadian Historical Association for her latest book, <\/span>Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada, <\/span><\/i>which was named Best Book in the Aboriginal History category.\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Patrias was honoured by the Canadian Committee on Women\u2019s History with the Hilda Neatby Prize for the best article in women\u2019s history. She was recognized for her work entitled, \u201cMore Menial Than Housemaids? Racialized and Gendered Labour in the Fruit and Vegetable Industry of Canada\u2019s Niagara Region, 1880-1945.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lux and her colleague Erika Dyck from the University of Saskatchewan also received the Best Article prize from the <\/span>Canadian Historical Review<\/span><\/i> for their work entitled, <\/span>\u201cPopulation Control in the \u2018Global North?\u2019: Canada\u2019s Response to Indigenous Reproductive Rights and Neo-Eugenics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Honoured by the recognition of her peers, Lux hopes that her book will add to Canadians\u2019 understanding of the roots of some of the inequities indigenous people continue to face. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe tend to think of 20th century health-care history as the progressive story of the making of Medicare and the heroes who led the way,\u201d Lux said. \u201cAt the same time, however, indigenous people were kept separate in underfunded, understaffed and overcrowded \u2018indian hospitals\u2019 that were rife with coercion and medical experimentation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The book, described by the prize committee as a grim story of institutional racism told with compassion, was written to emphasize the \u201cstrength and resolve of indigenous communities to improve health care and create a more equal society,\u201d Lux said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In doing the research, she was surprised how few archivists and historians had ever heard of the segregated hospitals, even though, in First Nations communities, most people either experienced the hospitals personally or had family and friends who did. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cUntil quite recently, the residential school experience was likewise erased from public memory,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lux was pleased her Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded work with Dyck, which received the best article prize, also resonated with fellow historians.<\/span><\/p>\n

The article is part of a book the pair are writing on reproductive politics in the era after Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau liberalized the laws and famously declared the state had no place in the bedrooms of the nation. Their research examines those whose bedrooms became of greater interest to the state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Patrias was also humbled by the recognition for her article, which examines the history of seasonal agricultural workers in Niagara during the First and Second World Wars, as well as the Depression.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her work compares the various marginalized groups who performed this labour in peacetime, women generally known as farmerettes. They included mostly immigrant women from eastern and southern Europe and indigenous families, and the middle-class English Canadian women recruited to do the work during wartime.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe wages and conditions of labour of these groups were strikingly different,\u201d Patrias said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cImmigrant and aboriginal workers were paid very low wages for this back-breaking labour, housed in inferior accommodation and eyed with suspicion in Niagara,\u201d she said. \u201cPrivileged by their class and racial background, English Canadian women were welcomed with open arms in Niagara communities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As a result, the latter group received higher wages, better housing, prepared meals and was commended on their wartime sacrifice \u2014 although their wages were still kept deliberately below those of male workers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Patrias said the article was intended to share the little known history of the female agricultural labourers who played an integral role in Canada\u2019s fruit and vegetable industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI hope people will appreciate the contribution of women, indigenous and other racialized workers, and also understand more about the process of racialization and gendering as bases of inequality,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Patrias, who is nearing retirement, said the award is especially meaningful because of her longstanding interest in women\u2019s history.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Brock University professors are being lauded by national organizations for their work examining aboriginal and women\u2019s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":45859,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,3319,37,6833,1,4],"tags":[5585,1257,2194,5583,5584,506,5586,4220],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45857,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45852\/revisions\/45857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}