Curated Stories
The Story of the Colonizer Wound
The violence of turning life into objects to be traded or sold began generations before Columbus stepped foot on Turtle Island. This story looks at the racial capitalist belief systems and cultural constructs that shape many of the strategies of Western medicine.
The Story of Tuberculosis
Public “hygiene” campaigns organized by the white-led Anti-Tuberculosis Movement embedded racism and classism into the treatment of this bacterial disease. Black care workers organized integrative care strategies in response that were then co-opted by the state.
The Story of Marine Health
The roots of the U.S. public health system emerged from a system that supported sea merchants and sailors involved in the transatlantic trade. This story tracks the development of systems of public health surveillance and control designed to protect borders and profit.
The Story of Disability Justice
Disability Justice is “a political, cultural practice and series of strategies and tactics that assert and agitate from the lived belief that our disabled, Deaf, sick bodies and minds are enough as we are” (Anti-Eugenics Movement Strategy Huddle).
The Story of COVID-19
A granular look at how chaos, care, and control shape healthcare practices, research, and policy through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic. This story examines ongoing expressions of generations of racism, xenophobia, and ableism alongside numerous stories of resistance.
The Story of Opium
Enforcement and access for narcotics has been as much about xenophobia, racism, and global economic policies as it has been about public health. The story of opium is the story of laudanum, which is also the story of morphine, codeine, heroin, and Oxycontin. It’s a story of social control, a story of Big Pharma, and a story of criminalization.
The Story of Rural Health
There is no clear agreement over what constitutes “rural” in the United States. Yet, at the same time, healthcare infrastructure has been continually defunded in rural communities, particularly in communities with large Black and Indigenous populations.
The Story of the Patenting of Life
Patent law was one of the strategies for colonization brought to Turtle Island by European settlers. Since that time, there has been an evolving argument over what can be patented or “owned,” shaping the evolution of agriculture and now also the pace of genetic technologies.
The Story of Sugar
This story tracks the relationship between the sugar industry’s demand for profits, the decimation of Indigenous lands, the creation of plantations and the North Atlantic Slave Trade, and the impact of sugar on the human body.