2006 Framework Award Winner Christian McMillen
The History of American Indian Health and Disease in a Global Context, 1900-2000
Through the lens of global public health, this course will examine the history of American Indian health and disease in the 20th century. By framing Indian health within a comparative context, this course will allow students to learn not only about the history of Indians and the ways in which they experienced disease, and the ways in which disease was combated. This course will also show students that the history of Indian health and disease is part of a larger history of health and disease around the world.
Placing Indians into a global context will illuminate for the students the universal connections that exist for all peoples in marginal settings. Additionally, the theoretical and empirical literature on global health is well developed; it is much less so for Indians in the 20th century. By looking at global health, the students will gain the theoretical background they need to then do research on the history of Indian health.
In addition to looking at the history of Indian health through the lens of global health, the course will be concerned at all times with the current state of global public health and will strive to make connections between contemporary and historical problems. For example, if one of the biggest problems in global health is access to medicine and health care in resource poor settings, so too was it in Indian country for the bulk of the 19th and 20th centuries.