Diagnosing the Discursive Indian: Medicine, Gender, and the “Dying Race”

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, social medicine was emerging as a key contributor to the production of racial hierarchies. At this time, the North American medical community expanded its interest and involvement with native people and applied its beliefs about race and disease to this population. In the process, a new knowledge about native health was created that saw disease as both a racialized and a gendered phenomenon. Hoping to apply these linkages to a broader population, the medical community advanced assimilative and hybridizing strategies to improve native health by eradicating perceived racial difference.