The First Nations nutrition experiments were a series of experiments run in Canada by Department of Pensions and National Health (now Health Canada) in the 1940s and 1950s. The experiments were conducted on at least 1,300 Indigenous people across Canada, approximately 1,000 of whom were children.[1] The deaths connected with the experiments have been described as part of Canada's genocide of Indigenous peoples.[2]
The experiments involved nutrient-poor isolated communities such as those in The Pas and Norway House in northern Manitoba and residential schools[3] and were designed to learn about the relative importance and optimum levels of newly discovered vitamins and nutritional supplements.[4][5][6] The experiments included deliberate, sustained malnourishment and in some cases, the withholding of dental services.[7]
The Government of Canada was aware of malnourishment in its residential schools and granted approval for the execution of nutritional experiments on children.[7] It is now known that the primary cause of malnutrition in residential schools was underfunding from the Canadian government.[1] The nutritional experiments residential school children were subjected to neither provided evidence of completion nor contributed to the body of knowledge around nutrition and supplementation.[1]
Nutritional experiments conducted on Indigenous children in residential schools came to public light in 2013 through the research of food historian Dr. Ian Mosby.[1]
Mosby, 2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).