Fighting for A Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada with Samir Shaheen-Hussain

By using the successful 2018 #aHand2Hold campaign that confronted the Quebec government’s practice of separating children from their families during medical evacuation airlifts as a case study, Dr. Samir Shaheen-Hussain will expose systemic anti-Indigenous racism in Canadian healthcare through medical violence inflicted upon Indigenous children, and the medical establishment’s role in colonial genocide.

There will be refreshments and snacks available, and participants will receive a promo code to get 30% off the novel.

WHEN: Thursday, April 27, 2023, from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

WHERE: hybrid | 2001 McGill College Avenue, Suite 1200; Zoom link will be sent in advance to registered attendees

Speaker bio

Samir Shaheen-Hussain has been involved in anti-authoritarian social justice movements – including Indigenous solidarity, anti-police brutality and migrant-justice organizing – for over two decades. He is a member of the Caring for Social Justice Collective and has written or co-written about state violence and health care for several publications. Fighting for A Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada was awarded both the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction by the Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF) in November 2021; the French translation (by Nicolas Calvé), Plus aucun enfant autochtone arraché: Pour en finir avec le colonialisme médical canadien, was awarded the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation by the QWF in November 2022.

Samir is an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics and an associate member of the School of Population and Global Health, both in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at McGill University. He works as a pediatric emergency physician in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal).