Investigating Disease Experience in Aboriginal Populations in Canada: the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Berens River and Poplar River, Manitoba

Abstract

This research focuses on the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic and its impact on and spread through two Aboriginal communities in Manitoba: Berens River and Poplar River. The mortality experiences these communities had during the 1918 influenza pandemic are used to examine (a) variations in disease experience between communities, (b) factors influencing the spread of influenza in the study communities during the 1918 pandemic, and (c) the usefulness of employing a holistic health model for community level health research. Reconstruction of the epidemic in these two communities is possible through the integration of both qualitative and quantitative data: ethnohistoric information, demographic, mortality, and mobility data, and environmental information. This thesis provides evidence that (1) closely related communities may have significantly different mortality experiences; while Berens River and Poplar River may have shared similar mortality patterns in some years between 1909-1929, the relationship was not predictable since significant differences could occur, as was the case during the 1918 influenza epidemic from which Poplar River did not suffer, and (2) differences in local economic activities were important determinants in the spread of the 1918 influenza epidemic in these two communities. The results of this investigation suggests that although communities share characteristics in common, such as culture and history, and show similarities in mortality experience, in the case of the introduction of a virgin soil epidemic these similarities cannot predict the course of an epidemic. It is argued that the holistic approach to health research provides a useful method investigate this epidemic since the use of epidemiological, ethnohistorical, environmental and historical information were all necessary in order to understand all the factors that contributed the spread of the 1918 flu.