“Brilliantly conceived, deeply researched, and powerfully written, <i>Bad Medicine</i> is a compelling book that reveals the interconnectedness of-indeed the interdependence among-a range of institutions that contained and confined Indigenous lives in the Progressive Era as well as the networks of white racial power that buttressed and sustained this disciplinary apparatus. Sarah A. Whitt takes seemingly well-trodden stories and presents them anew by examining generative yet unexplored areas in ways that will transform our understanding of them. <i>Bad Medicine</i> is an incredibly important contribution.” - Brianna Theobald, author of (Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century) “In <i>Bad Medicine</i>, Sarah A. Whitt provides us with a powerful look at Native confinement, punishment, and resistance in the settler project. By examining several distinct but ideologically interrelated institutions, she reveals the connections among Indigenous incarceration, pathologization, and labor exploitation and highlights the often overlooked role of institutions in settler pursuit of Indigenous subjugation.” - Shannon Speed, author of (Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State)
Introduction: Bad Medicine 1
1. “An Ordinary Case of Discipline”: Surveillance and Punishment at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1879–1918 27
2. “Hoe Handle Medicine”: Medicinal Labor at the Ford Motor Company and Lancaster General Hospital 70
3. Sisters Magdalene: Entwined Histories of “Reform” at Good Shepherd Homes 109
4. “Care and Maintenance”: Settler Ableism and Land Dispossession at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, 1902–1934 139
Epilogue: Indigenous Futurities and the Afterlives of Institutionalization 184
Appendix 199
Notes 207
Bibliography 245
Index 263