Canadian residential schools & diabetes: a correlational study

Abstract

Residential schools were once utilized as a means of assimilation for First Nation and Indigenous people across North America. With that goal in mind, it has become accepted common and documented knowledge that the environment, treatment, facilities, and nutrition were sub-par and below both historical and modern standards for the healthy development of children. Numerous physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual abuses occurred to attendees resulting in historic, intergenerational trauma. In addition to this, there is an epidemic of diabetes sweeping across Canada with rates of diabetes among Indigenous people being twice as high than those among other Canadians. A previous study showed that cultural continuity in the form of language fluency was a protective factor against diabetes and suicidal ideation in on-reserve Indigenous people. In the present study, we used data from the Aboriginal Peoples Survey 2017, which surveyed Canadian Aboriginal people living off-reserve. The data was used to explore the relationship between diabetes and attendance at former residential schools, as well as cultural continuity as a protective factor against diabetes and suicidal ideation among survivors and intergenerational survivors. Intergenerational attendance at residential schools was tracked back to the time of the parents (2nd generation) and grandparents (3rd generation) of those that responded to the survey. To explore the relationships between the binary variables involved, cross-tabulations, logistic regression models, Pearson correlations and chi square tests of independence were used. The findings of the research is discussed and disclosed.