Article by Prof. Elizabeth James featured in Oregon Historical Quarterly

UAA Department of History professor Elizabeth James' article, "'Hardly a Family is Free From the Disease': Tuberculosis, Health Care, and Assimilation Policy on the Nez Perce Reservation, 1908-1942," appears in the summer 2011 issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly.

Tuberculosis afflicted numerous Native American reservations in epidemic proportions in the early twentieth century. Professor James' article explores the impact of tuberculosis on the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho and efforts to alleviate its significant morbidity and mortality rates. A particular focus is federal policies that could and did preclude efforts to alleviate the disease. Such efforts included the experimental opening of a "sanitarium school" in which students received medical care while at a boarding school that sought to assimilate students into American culture--often at the price of their own heritage.

James will also be presenting her research on this topic at the annual meeting of the Western History Association this fall in Oakland, California.

For more information, please contact Kathy Woodhead in the History Department at ankjw@uaa.alaska.edu.