ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the convergence of scientific racism, which formed the basis of early psychiatric theory, and the colonial project in British Columbia during the early years of the twentieth century. It examines how the medical authorities employed a bifocal lens composed of Western gender norms and settler-colonial perceptions of indigeneity to fashion accounts of madness and social transgression in many of the Indigenous female patients who were admitted to the provincial mental-hospital system from 1900 to 1919. The chapter also discusses the lack of psychiatric knowledge concerning Indigenous peoples during the period as well as conditions specific to the province of British Columbia. It analyzes several case studies that illustrate the influence of settler-colonial common sense on the psychiatric regimes of the early twentieth century. The chapter also examines the patient case files to ascertain how colonial mechanisms informed not only the legal system but also the developing psychiatric practices in early-twentieth-century British Columbia, Canada.
