An exploration of anti-Indigenous systemic racism in Canadian health care and the medical establishment’s role in colonial genocide.

Launched by healthcare providers in January 2018, the #aHand2Hold campaign confronted the Quebec government’s practice of separating children from their families during medical evacuation airlifts, which disproportionately affected remote and northern Indigenous communities. Pediatric emergency physician Samir Shaheen-Hussain’s captivating narrative of this successful campaign, which garnered unprecedented public attention and media coverage, seeks to answer lingering questions about why such a cruel practice remained in place for so long. In doing so it serves as an indispensable case study of contemporary medical colonialism in Quebec.

Shaheen-Hussain’s unique perspective combines his experience as a frontline pediatrician with his long-standing involvement in anti-authoritarian social justice movements.