VICTORIA –
In a haunting message from beyond the grave, Métis Elder Sonny James MacDonald recounted being incarcerated for more than two years at an Indian Hospital in Edmonton in the 1940s for tuberculosis treatment, suffering abuse and isolation as a child.
“After the surgery … they took it upon themselves … that they should take my pajama bottoms off to prevent me from walking around,” MacDonald, a renowned carver who died in 2021, said in a video clip taken from a documentary release that same year.
“I was put in this little room … there was no window, it was the end of the hallway. I was just like a prisoner,” he said. MacDonald said an orderly would trap him in a hospital washroom and sexually assault him.
MacDonald’s story echoed in a Victoria conference hall …