Structures of Indifference

An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City

By: Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Adele Perry

Narrated by: Wesley French

Structures of Indifference examines an Indigenous life and death in a Canadian city and what it reveals about the ongoing history of colonialism. At the heart of this story is a 34-hour period in September 2008. During that day and half, Brian Sinclair, a middle-aged, non-status Anishinaabeg resident of Manitoba's capital city, arrived in the emergency room of the Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg's major downtown hospital, was left untreated and unattended to, and ultimately died from an easily treatable infection. His death reflects a particular structure of indifference born of and maintained by colonialism.

McCallum and Perry present the ways in which Sinclair, once erased and ignored, came to represent diffuse yet singular and largely dehumanized ideas about Indigenous people, modernity, and decline in cities. This story tells us about ordinary indigeneity in the City of Winnipeg through Sinclair's experience and restores the complex humanity denied him in his interactions with Canadian health and legal systems, both before and after his death.

Structures of Indifference completes the story left untold by the inquiry into Sinclair’s death, the 2014 report of which omitted any consideration of underlying factors, including racism and systemic discrimination.

©2019 Mary Jane Logan McCallum and Adele Perry (P)2021 University of Manitoba Press

Critic reviews

“One is to hope that this book is another nail in the coffin of colonialism’s impact on Indigenous people in Canada." (Earl Waugh, University of Alberta, The Canadian Journal of Native Studies)

“An accessible resource, providing undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, historians, and members of the general public a deep and careful study of what the life and death of one man can tell us about the deadly legacy and troubling contemporary prevalence of racism in the Canadian healthcare system.” (Karen Ella McCallum, Bridgewater State University, American Review of Canadian Studies)

“The book situates a global and pervasive history of dispossession and marginalization within a local and specific story of one Indigenous life.... A key success is that the authors never lose sight of Sinclair’s complex humanity as a man and family member, and as an urban Indigenous community member within an institution, city, province, and country that too often dehumanizes and ignores Indigenous peoples.” (G. Bruyere, University of Lethbridge, CHOICE)