03/31/2026
Repost Article: Mistawasis Nehiyawak woman recalls ‘long days’ spent in basement ‘Indian ward’ at Prince Albert hospital by Leanne Sanders, March 31, 2026 [source: APTN News]
Title: "First Nations health analyst says ‘Indian wards’ in hospitals need to be acknowledged"
"A First Nations health analyst in Saskatchewan is sharing the story of a woman who as a child spent eight months in the basement of Holy Family Hospital in Prince Albert in a segregated ward-in the hope others will come forward.
Brenda Robertson works in the First Nations Health Ombudsperson’s office in Saskatoon and says while a lot is known about so-called “Indian Hospitals” that resulted in a class action against the government, little has been shared about “Indian wards” or annexes.
“Unfortunately, the class action lawsuit was narrowly defined. Only those who attended the listed “Indian hospitals” were entitled to apply to be part of the class action lawsuit,” Robertson tells APTN News in an interview. The Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception (SCIC), built and operated Holy Family Hospital from 1910–1997. The hospital is not on the Class Action’s approved list of 33 Indian hospitals.
Robertson cites the work of researcher Dr. Maureen Lux, who she says “has briefly noted the existence of these segregated wards in her work, but they are mentioned only in passing.”
“While I cannot say with certainty, it stands to reason that Indian wards and annexes may have been more common than the formally designated “Indian hospitals,” since these segregated spaces existed within many local public hospitals,” Robertson says.
According to the settlement website, “Indian wards” or segregated wings in provincial/community hospitals were excluded because they were not under direct federal operation, leaving many victims of segregated care ineligible for compensation.
Muriel Luther, now 77, was just six years old when she broke her leg while playing with her brother, sister and nephew in an old granary. She was living with her family on Mistawasis Nahiyawak First Nation at the time, but they were visiting at an older sister’s farm. She says it happened in 1955 and she was first taken to see the nurse at the reserve hospital.
“She just put a board on my leg and we had to go and meet the ambulance on the highway from our reserve because the day that this happened it rained and the reserve roads-they get really muddy so we had a tractor and a wagon that took me to the highway for the hospital.”
Luther had already been in All Saints residential school, but this was the first hospital stay she experienced.
“I didn’t know that these places [Indian wards] even existed, I thought I was the only one,” Luther says. “We were, put in the basement in this hospital, and there were not just children. There were adults that were down there. I can remember one lady that was always trying to comfort us because we cried because we were lonely,” Luther says.
Luther describes a windowless basement space where the Indigenous patients occupied a corner, away from the main hospital wards. In traction, she says the days were long with nothing to do.
“The nuns used to come and give us pillowcases that were embroidered. And we had to pick all the embroidery out with little needles. And that was something they gave us [and] coloring books, but there was no TV at that time either. So it was a long stay,” Luther says.
Robertson says in her research of the Indian hospitals, putting young children in traction was something they did so they wouldn’t be able to move about.
Luther recalls a visit by her parents where she begged them to take her home, and crying after they left. She says the nun overseeing the ward spoke to her harshly afterward.
“‘Do you see what you guys do? That’s why we don’t like parents to come to visit because it just upsets everybody and you guys cry for days,’ and she was really quite mean about it,” Luther says.
“There were other kids that that had visitors or their parents came and that was the last time that my parents ever came to see me because they must have told them not to come. I felt like I was abandoned.”
She says the loneliness and trauma were compounded because she had been in residential school since she was four years old and returned to residential school after her hospital stay which included an additional month in a nursing home.
Robertson says fear was one of the main reasons Indigenous patients were segregated in the Indian hospitals and wards like the one Luther was placed in.
“This was a period when the public was being warned about Indigenous people as supposed carriers of tuberculosis. Non‑Indigenous communities were fearful of exposure, and segregation was seen as necessary, whether in stand‑alone Indian hospitals or, as in Muriel’s case, in the basement of a public hospital,” Robertson says.
The $1.1-billion class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of former patients of government-run “Indian hospitals,” in 2018 and certified in 2020. The Federal Court issued its decision to approve the settlement agreement on June 24, 2025.
The settlement will provide compensation to the Primary Class Members who experienced physical, verbal, psychological, and/or sexual abuse while they were admitted to one of the Federal Indian Hospitals.
While the number of those eligible is not certain, some of the hospitals saw thousands of patients during their operation.
The Nanaimo Indian hospital saw 14,000 patients over two-decades.
“To my knowledge, very little has been documented or publicly acknowledged about these wards,” Robertson says.
“Many of the people who experienced them are now elderly, and unless their stories are recorded, this history will remain largely unknown.”
