Bad Medicine

“Brilliantly conceived, deeply researched, and powerfully written, Bad Medicine is a compelling book that reveals the interconnectedness of—indeed the interdependence among—a range of institutions that contained and confined Indigenous lives in the Progressive Era as well as the networks of white racial power that buttressed and sustained this disciplinary apparatus. Sarah A. Whitt takes seemingly well-trodden stories and presents them anew by examining generative yet unexplored areas in ways that will transform our understanding of them. Bad Medicine is an incredibly important contribution.” - Brianna Theobald, author of Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century

“In Bad Medicine, Sarah A. Whitt provides us with a powerful look at Native confinement, punishment, and resistance in the settler project. By examining several distinct but ideologically interrelated institutions, she reveals the connections among Indigenous incarceration, pathologization, and labor exploitation and highlights the often overlooked role of institutions in settler pursuit of Indigenous subjugation.” - Shannon Speed, author of Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State

"The use of primary sources, including letters, makes this book both poignant and revealing as it explores the use of institutionalization to both assimilate and discriminate with equal intensity. The text further discusses the ramifications of these tactics for current Indigenous peoples and their futures. Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals."