title: First Nations in Canada

text: Offended by the concepts of the treaties, Cree chiefs resisted them. Big Bear refused to sign Treaty 6 until starvation among his people forced his hand in 1882. His attempts to unite Indigenous nations made progress. In 1884 the Métis (including the Anglo-Métis) asked Louis Riel to return from the United States, where he had fled after the Red River Rebellion, to appeal to the government on their behalf. The government gave a vague response. In March 1885, Riel, Gabriel Dumont, Honoré Jackson (a.k.a. Will Jackson), Crowfoot, Chief of the Blackfoot First Nation and Chief Poundmaker, who after the 1876 negotiations of Treaty 6 split off to form his band. Together, they set up the Provisional Government of Saskatchewan, believing that they could influence the federal government in the same way as they had in 1869. The North-West Rebellion of 1885 was a brief and unsuccessful uprising by the Métis people of the District of Saskatchewan under Louis Riel against the Dominion of Canada, which they believed had failed to address their concerns for the survival of their people. In 1884, 2,000 Cree from reserves met near Battleford to organise into a large, cohesive resistance. Discouraged by the lack of government response but encouraged by the efforts of the Métis at armed rebellion, Wandering Spirit and other young militant Cree attacked the small town of Frog Lake, killing Thomas Quinn, the hated Indian Agent and eight others. Although Big Bear actively opposed the attacks, he was charged and tried for treason and sentenced to three years in prison. After the Red River Rebellion of 1869–1870, Métis moved from Manitoba to the District of Saskatchewan, where they founded a settlement at Batoche on the South Saskatchewan River.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In Manitoba settlers from Ontario began to arrive. They pushed for land to be allotted in the square concession system of English Canada, rather than the seigneurial system of strips reaching back from a river which the Métis were familiar with in their French-Canadian culture. The buffalo were being hunted to extinction by the Hudson's Bay Company and other hunters, as for generations the Métis had depended on them as a chief source of food.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The history of colonization is complex, varied according to the time and place. France and Britain were the main colonial powers involved, though the United States also began to extend its territory at the expense of indigenous people as well.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: From the late 18th century, European Canadians encouraged First Nations to assimilate into the European-based culture, referred to as "Canadian culture". The assumption was that this was the "correct" culture because the Canadians of European descent saw themselves as dominant, and technologically, politically and culturally superior. There was resistance against this assimilation and many businesses denied European practices. The Tecumseh Wigwam of Toronto, for example, did not adhere to the widely practiced Lord's Day observance, making it a popular spot, especially on Sundays. These attempts reached a climax in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Founded in the 19th century, the Canadian Indian residential school system was intended to force the assimilation of Aboriginal and First Nations people into European-Canadian society. The purpose of the schools, which separated children from their families, has been described by commentators as "killing the Indian in the child."


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Funded under the "Indian Act" by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, a branch of the federal government, the schools were run by churches of various denominations – about 60% by Roman Catholics, and 30% by the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada, along with its pre-1925 predecessors, Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Methodist churches.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The attempt to force assimilation involved punishing children for speaking their own languages or practicing their own faiths, leading to allegations in the 20th century of cultural genocide and ethnocide. There was widespread physical and sexual abuse. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and a lack of medical care led to high rates of tuberculosis, and death rates of up to 69%. Details of the mistreatment of students had been published numerous times throughout the 20th century, but following the closure of the schools in the 1960s, the work of indigenous activists and historians led to a change in the public perception of the residential school system, as well as official government apologies, and a (controversial) legal settlement.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Colonization had a significant impact on First Nations diet and health. According to the historian Mary-Ellen Kelm, "inadequate reserve allocations, restrictions on the food fishery, overhunting, and over-trapping" alienated First Nations from their traditional way of life, which undermined their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: As Canadian ideas of progress evolved around the start of the 20th century, the federal Indian policy was directed at removing Indigenous people from their communal lands and encouraging assimilation. Amendments to the "Indian Act" in 1905 and 1911 made it easier for the government to expropriate reserve lands from First Nations. The government sold nearly half of the Blackfoot reserve in Alberta to settlers.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: When the Kainai (Blood) Nation refused to accept the sale of their lands in 1916 and 1917, the Department of Indian Affairs held back funding necessary for farming until they relented. In British Columbia, the McKenna–McBride Royal Commission was created in 1912 to settle disputes over reserve lands in the province. The claims of Indigenous people were ignored, and the commission allocated new, less valuable lands (reserves) for First Nations.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Those nations who managed to maintain their ownership of good lands often farmed successfully. Indigenous people living near the Cowichan and Fraser rivers, and those from Saskatchewan managed to produce good harvests. Since 1881, those First Nations people living in the prairie provinces required permits from Indian Agents to sell any of their produce. Later the government created a pass system in the old Northwest Territories that required indigenous people to seek written permission from an Indian Agent before leaving their reserves for any length of time. Indigenous people regularly defied those laws, as well as bans on Sun Dances and potlatches, in an attempt to practice their culture.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The or Natural Resources Acts was part of a shift acknowledging indigenous rights. It enabled provincial control of Crown land and allowed Provincial laws regulating game to apply to Indians, but it also ensured that "Indians shall have the right ... of hunting, trapping and fishing game and fish for food at all seasons of the year on all unoccupied Crown lands and on any other lands to which the said Indians may have a right of access."


title: First Nations in Canada

text: More than 6,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis served with British forces during First World War and Second World War. A generation of young native men fought on the battlefields of Europe during the Great War and approximately 300 of them died there. When Canada declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939, the native community quickly responded to volunteer. Four years later, in May 1943, the government declared that, as British subjects, all able Indian men of military age could be called up for training and service in Canada or overseas.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Following the end of the Second World War, laws concerning First Nations in Canada began to change, albeit slowly. The federal prohibition of potlatch and Sun Dance ceremonies ended in 1951. Provincial governments began to accept the right of Indigenous people to vote. In June 1956, section 9 of the "Citizenship Act" was amended to grant formal citizenship to Status Indians and Inuit, retroactively as of January 1947.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In 1960, First Nations people received the right to vote in federal elections without forfeiting their Indian status. By comparison, Native Americans in the United States had been allowed to vote since the 1920s.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In his 1969 White Paper, then-Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chrétien, proposed the abolition of the "Indian Act" of Canada, the rejection of Aboriginal land claims, and the assimilation of First Nations people into the Canadian population with the status of "other ethnic minorities" rather than as a distinct group.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Harold Cardinal and the Indian Chiefs of Alberta responded with a document entitled "Citizens Plus" but commonly known as the "Red Paper". In it, they explained Status Indians' widespread opposition to Chrétien's proposal. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the Liberals began to back away from the 1969 White Paper, particularly after the Calder case decision in 1973. After the Canadian Supreme Court recognized that indigenous rights and treaty rights were not extinguished, a process was begun to resolve land claims and treaty rights and is ongoing today.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In 1970, severe mercury poisoning, called Ontario Minamata disease, was discovered among Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation and Wabaseemoong Independent Nations people, who lived near Dryden, Ontario. There was extensive mercury pollution caused by Dryden Chemicals Company's waste water effluent in the Wabigoon-English River system. Because local fish were no longer safe to eat, the Ontario provincial government closed the commercial fisheries run by the First Nation people and ordered them to stop eating local fish. Previously it had made up the majority of their diet. In addition to the acute mercury poisoning in northwestern Ontario, Aamjiwnaang First Nation people near Sarnia, Ontario, experienced a wide range of chemical effects, including severe mercury poisoning. They suffered low birth rates, skewed birth-gender ratio, and health effects among the population. This led to legislation and eventually the Indian Health Transfer Policy that provided a framework for the assumption of control of health services by First Nations people, and set forth a developmental approach to transfer centred on the concept of self-determination in health. Through this process, the decision to enter into transfer discussions with Health Canada rests with each community. Once involved in transfer, communities are able to take control of health programme responsibilities at a pace determined by their individual circumstances and health management capabilities.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The capacity, experience and relationships developed by First Nations as a result of health transfer was a factor that assisted the creation of the First Nations Health Authority in British Columbia.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In 1981, Elijah Harper, a Cree from Red Sucker Lake, Manitoba, became the first "Treaty Indian" in Manitoba to be elected as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba. In 1990, Harper achieved national fame by holding an eagle feather as he refused to accept the Meech Lake Accord, a constitutional amendment package negotiated to gain Quebec's acceptance of the "Constitution Act, 1982", but also one that did not address any First Nations grievances. The accord was negotiated in 1987 without the input of Canada's Aboriginal peoples. The third, final constitutional conference on Aboriginal peoples was also unsuccessful. The Manitoba assembly was required to unanimously consent to a motion allowing it to hold a vote on the accord, because of a procedural rule. Twelve days before the ratification deadline for the Accord, Harper began a filibuster that prevented the assembly from ratifying the accord. Because Meech Lake failed in Manitoba, the proposed constitutional amendment failed. Harper also opposed the Charlottetown Accord in 1992, even though Assembly of First Nations Chief Ovide Mercredi supported it.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: According to the "Indian Act", status Indian women who married men who were not status Indians lost their treaty status, and their children would not get status. However, in the reverse situation, if a status Indian man married a woman who was not a status Indian, the man would keep his status and his children would also receive treaty status. In the 1970s, the Indian Rights for Indian Women and Native Women's Association of Canada groups campaigned against this policy because it discriminated against women and failed to fulfill treaty promises. They successfully convinced the federal government to change the section of the act with the adoption of Bill C-31 on June 28, 1985. Women who had lost their status and children who had been excluded were then able to register and gain official Indian status. Despite these changes, status Indian women who married men who were not status Indians could pass their status on only one generation: their children would gain status, but (without a marriage to a full-status Indian) their grandchildren would not. A status Indian man who married a woman who was not a status Indian retained status as did his children, but his wife did not gain status, nor did his grandchildren.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Bill C-31 also gave elected bands the power to regulate who was allowed to reside on their reserves and to control development on their reserves. It abolished the concept of "enfranchisement" by which First Nations people could gain certain rights by renouncing their Indian status.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In 1991, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney created the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples chaired by René Dussault and Georges Erasmus. Their 1996 report proposed the creation of a government for (and by) the First Nations that would be responsible within its own jurisdiction, and with which the federal government would speak on a "Nation-to-Nation" basis. This proposal offered a far different way of doing politics than the traditional policy of assigning First Nations matters under the jurisdiction of the Indian and Northern Affairs, managed by one minister of the federal cabinet. The report also recommended providing the governments of the First Nations with up to $2 billion every year until 2010, in order to reduce the economic gap between the First Nations and the rest of the Canadian citizenry. The money would represent an increase of at least 50% to the budget of Indian and Northern Affairs. The report engaged First Nations leaders to think of ways to cope with the challenging issues their people were facing, so the First Nations could take their destiny into their own hands.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The federal government, then headed by Jean Chrétien, responded to the report a year later by officially presenting its apologies for the forced acculturation the federal government had imposed on the First Nations, and by offering an "initial" provision of $350 million.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In the spirit of the Eramus–Dussault commission, tripartite (federal, provincial, and First Nations) accords have been signed since the report was issued. Several political crises between different provincial governments and different bands of the First Nations also occurred in the late 20th century, notably the Oka Crisis, Ipperwash Crisis, Burnt Church Crisis, and the Gustafsen Lake standoff.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In 2001, the Quebec government, the federal government, and the Cree Nation signed "La Paix des Braves" ("The Peace of the Braves", a reference to the 1701 peace treaty between the French and the Iroquois League). The agreement allowed Hydro-Québec to exploit the province's hydroelectric resources in exchange for an allocation of $3.5 billion to be given to the government of the Cree Nation. Later, the Inuit of northern Quebec (Nunavik) joined in the agreement.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In 2005, the leaders of the First Nations, various provincial governments, and the federal government produced an agreement called the Kelowna Accord, which would have yielded $5 billion over 10 years, but the new federal government of Stephen Harper (2006) did not follow through on the working paper.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: First Nations, along with the Métis and the Inuit, have claimed to receive inadequate funding for education, and allege their rights have been overlooked. James Bartleman, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario from 2002 to 2007, listed the encouragement of indigenous young people as one of his key priorities. During his term, he launched initiatives to promote literacy and bridge-building. Bartleman was the first Aboriginal person to be lieutenant governor in Ontario.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In late 2005, the drinking water crisis of the Kashechewan First Nation received national media attention when "E. coli" was discovered in their water supply system, following two years of living under a boil-water advisory. The drinking water was supplied by a new treatment plant built in March 1998. The cause of the tainted water was a plugged chlorine injector that was not discovered by local operators, who were not qualified to be running the treatment plant. When officials arrived and fixed the problem, chlorine levels were around 1.7 mg/L, which was blamed for skin disorders such as impetigo and scabies. An investigation led by Health Canada revealed that skin disorders were likely due to living in squalor. The evacuation of Kashechewan was largely viewed by Canadians as a cry for help for other underlying social and economic issues that Aboriginal people in Canada face.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: On June 29, 2007, Canadian Aboriginal groups held countrywide protests aimed at ending First Nations poverty, dubbed the Aboriginal Day of Action. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, although groups disrupted transportation with blockades or bonfires; a stretch of the Highway 401 was shut down, as was the Canadian National Railway's line between Toronto and Montreal.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The Idle No More protest movement originated among the Aboriginals in Canada and their non-Aboriginal supporters in Canada, and to a lesser extent, internationally. It consisted of a number of political actions worldwide, inspired in part by the hunger strike of Attawapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence and further coordinated via social media. A reaction to alleged abuses of indigenous treaty rights by the federal government, the movement took particular issue with the omnibus bill Bill C-45.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The relationship between the Canadian Crown and the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples stretches back to the first interactions between European colonialists and North American indigenous people. Over centuries of interaction, treaties were established, and First Nations have, like the Māori and the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand, come to generally view these agreements as being between them and the Crown of Canada, and not the ever-changing governments.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The associations exist between the Aboriginal peoples and the reigning monarch of Canada; as was stated in the proposed First NationsFederal Crown Political Accord: "cooperation will be a cornerstone for partnership between Canada and First Nations, wherein Canada is the short-form reference to Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada". These relations are governed by the established treaties; the Supreme Court stated that treaties "served to reconcile pre-existing Aboriginal sovereignty with assumed Crown sovereignty, and to define Aboriginal rights", and the First Nations saw these agreements as meant to last "as long as the sun shines, grass grows and rivers flow".


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Although taxes are not specifically addressed in the written terms of any treaties, assurances regarding taxation were clearly offered when at least some treaties were negotiated.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Many scholars believe these exemptions serve to oppress Aboriginal peoples by allowing conservative-minded courts to impart their own (sometimes discriminatory) views into the Aboriginal taxation jurisprudence. As one professor wrote:


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Self-government has given chiefs and their councils powers which combine those of a province, school board, health board and municipality. Councils are also largely self-regulating regarding utilities, environmental protection, natural resources, building codes, etc. There is concern that this wide-ranging authority, concentrated in a single council, might be a cause of the dysfunctional governments experienced by many First Nations.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) is a body of First Nations leaders in Canada. The aims of the organization are to protect the rights, treaty obligations, ceremonies, and claims of citizens of the First Nations in Canada.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: After the failures of the League of Indians in Canada in the interwar period and the North American Indian Brotherhood in two decades following the Second World War, the Aboriginal peoples of Canada organised themselves once again in the early 1960s. The National Indian Council was created in 1961 to represent Indigenous people, including treaty/status Indians, non-status people, the Métis people, though not the Inuit. This organization collapsed in 1968 as the three groups failed to act as one, so the non-status and Métis groups formed the Native Council of Canada and treaty/status groups formed the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB), an umbrella group for provincial and territorial First Nations organizations.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: National Indigenous Peoples Day, formerly "National Aboriginal Day", June 21, recognizes the cultures and contributions of Aboriginal peoples of Canada. There are currently over 600 recognized First Nations governments or bands encompassing 1,172,790 people spread across Canada with distinctive Aboriginal cultures, languages, art, and music.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Today, there are over thirty different languages spoken by indigenous people, most of which are spoken only in Canada. Many are in decline. Those with the most speakers include Anishinaabe and Cree (together totalling up to 150,000 speakers); Inuktitut with about 29,000 speakers in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik (Northern Quebec), and Nunatsiavut (Northern Labrador); and Mi'kmaq, with around 8,500 speakers, mostly in Eastern Canada. Many Aboriginal peoples have lost their native languages and often all but surviving elders speak English or French as their first language.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Two of Canada's territories give official status to native languages. In Nunavut, Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun are official languages alongside English and French, and Inuktitut is a common vehicular language in government. In the Northwest Territories, the "Official Languages Act" declares that there are eleven different languages: Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, Gwich'in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey, South Slavey and Tłįchǫ. Besides English and French, these languages are not vehicular in government; official status entitles citizens to receive services in them on request and to deal with the government in them.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: First Nations were producing art for thousands of years before the arrival of European settler colonists and the eventual establishment of Canada as a nation state. Like the peoples who produced them, indigenous art traditions spanned territories across North America. Indigenous art traditions are organized by art historians according to cultural, linguistic or regional groups: Northwest Coast, Plateau, Plains, Eastern Woodlands, Subarctic, and Arctic.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Art traditions vary enormously amongst and within these diverse groups. Indigenous art with a focus on portability and the body is distinguished from European traditions and its focus on architecture. Indigenous visual art may be used in conjunction with other arts. Shamans' masks and rattles are used ceremoniously in dance, storytelling and music.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Artworks preserved in museum collections date from the period after European contact and show evidence of the creative adoption and adaptation of European trade goods such as metal and glass beads. During the 19th and the first half of the 20th century the Canadian government pursued an active policy of forced and cultural assimilation toward indigenous peoples. The "Indian Act" banned manifestations of the Sun Dance, the Potlatch, and works of art depicting them.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that indigenous artists such as Mungo Martin, Bill Reid and Norval Morrisseau began to publicly renew and re-invent indigenous art traditions. Currently there are indigenous artists practising in all media in Canada and two indigenous artists, Edward Poitras and Rebecca Belmore, have represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1995 and 2005 respectively.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The First Nations peoples of Canada comprise diverse ethnic groups, each with their own musical traditions. There are general similarities in the music, but is usually social (public) or ceremonial (private). Public, social music may be dance music accompanied by rattles and drums. Private, ceremonial music includes vocal songs with accompaniment on percussion, used to mark occasions like Midewiwin ceremonies and Sun Dances.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Traditionally, Aboriginal peoples used the materials at hand to make their instruments for centuries before Europeans immigrated to Canada. First Nations people made gourds and animal horns into rattles, which were elaborately carved and beautifully painted. In woodland areas, they made horns of birch bark and drumsticks of carved antlers and wood. Traditional percussion instruments such as drums were generally made of carved wood and animal hides. These musical instruments provide the background for songs, and songs are the background for dances. Traditional First Nations people consider song and dance to be sacred. For years after Europeans came to Canada, First Nations people were forbidden to practice their ceremonies.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In the 20th century, the First Nations population of Canada increased tenfold. Between 1900 and 1950 the population grew only by 29% but after the 1960s the infant mortality level on reserves dropped and the population grew by 161%. Since the 1980s, the number of First Nations babies more than doubled and currently almost half of the First Nations population is under the age of 25. As a result, the First Nations population of Canada is expected to increase in the coming decades.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In 2021, there were 1,807,250 Aboriginal people in Canada, accounting for 5.0% of the total population. This was up from 4.9% in 2016.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: There are distinct First Nations in Canada, originating across the country. Indian reserves, established in Canadian law by treaties such as Treaty 7, are the very limited contemporary lands of First Nations recognized by the non-indigenous governments. A few reserves exist within cities, such as the Opawikoscikan Reserve in Prince Albert, Wendake in Quebec City or Enoch Cree Nation 135 in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region. There are more reserves in Canada than there are First Nations, as First Nations were ceded multiple reserves by treaty.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: First Nations can be grouped into cultural areas based on their ancestors' primary lifeway, or occupation, at the time of European contact. These culture areas correspond closely with physical and ecological regions of Canada.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Ethnographers commonly classify indigenous peoples of the Americas in the United States and Canada into ten geographical regions with shared cultural traits (called "cultural areas"). The Canadian (in whole or in part) regions are Arctic, Subarctic, Northeast Woodlands, Plains, and Plateau. See the individual article on each tribe, band society or First Nation.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast communities centred around ocean and river fishing; in the interior of British Columbia, hunting and gathering and river fishing. In both of these areas, salmon was of chief importance. For the people of the plains, bison hunting was the primary activity. In the subarctic forest, other species such as the moose were more important. For peoples near the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, shifting agriculture was practised, including the raising of maize, beans, and squash.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Today, Aboriginal people work in a variety of occupations and live outside their ancestral homes. The traditional cultures of their ancestors, shaped by nature, still exert a strong influence on their culture, from spirituality to political attitudes.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: First Nations peoples face a number of problems to a greater degree than Canadians overall, some with living conditions comparable to developing countries like Haiti. Indigenous peoples have higher rates of unemployment, rates of incarceration, substance abuse, health problems, homelessness, fetal alcohol syndrome, lower levels of education and higher levels of poverty.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Canada's federal residential school system began in the mid-1870s, building upon a patchwork of boarding schools established and operated by various Christian denominations. Member of Parliament for Assiniboia West, Nicholas Flood Davin, produced a report, known generally as the Davin Report, that recommended the establishment of a school system similar to that being created in the United States. One of its chief goals was to remove Aboriginal children from "the influence of the wigwam", which he claimed was stronger than that of existing day schools, and keep them instead "constantly within the circle of civilized conditions". While the history of the Indian Residential School system (IRS) is a checkered one, much criticism has been levelled at both the system and those who established and supported it. Neglect and poor nutrition were often what Aboriginal children experienced, particularly in the early decades of the system's operation. The stripping away of traditional native culture—sometimes referred to as "cultural genocide"—is another charge levelled at the residential schools. In many schools, students were not allowed to speak their Indigenous languages or practice any of their own customs, and thus lost their sense of identity, inevitably driving a cultural wedge between children and their family.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: By 1920, attendance at some sort of school was mandatory for Aboriginal children in Canada. The "Indian Act" made education compulsory, and where there were no federal days schools—or, in later decades, a provincial public school—a residential school was the only choice. Enrolment statistics indicate that between 20% and 30% of Aboriginal children during the history of the IRS system attended a residential school for at least a year, and many were enrolled for ten years or more. In some cases, children could return home on weekends and holidays, but for those in schools established far away from remote communities, this was not possible.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The removal of children from their families and communities brought short and long term harm to many native communities. While many schools had infirmaries and provided medical care in later decades, abuse of various kinds and crowded conditions in the first decades of the IRS history led to poor health and even death for a percentage of those enrolled. It has been argued that the psychological and emotional trauma resulting from both the abuse and the removal of the children from their families and culture has resulted in substance abuse, greater domestic violence, unemployability, and increased rates of suicide. In many cases, children leaving residential schools found themselves at an intersection of cultures, where they were no longer comfortable within their own cultures, yet not accepted into mainstream Canadian culture. Former students are now routinely referred to as "survivors".


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Not all Aboriginal children attended residential schools. During the period in which the schools operated, more than a third of indigenous children attended federal day schools, and about a third received no schooling at all. It is however the residential school system that receives much of the blame for the various problems and challenges facing Canada's indigenous people today. During the years in which the residential schools operated, they were regarded by most Canadians as a sensible and beneficial solution to native education, and in some cases, Aboriginal communities specifically requested that a residential school be built. When the system began to closing down in the 1960s, a significant number of communities asked that their school remain open.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The last Canadian residential school to close was Gordon Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, founded in 1889, and closed in 1996.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The Christian denominations that operated the schools on behalf of the federal government have expressed regret and issued apologies for their part in a system that harmed many indigenous children. In 2008, the government issued an official apology to the students who were forced to attend the residential schools and their families.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In June 2015, the federally-established Truth and Reconciliation Commission, charged with investigating and reporting on the residential school system, issued its summary report, and in December of the same year, its final report. Chief Commissioner, Judge Murray Sinclair, has publicly declared the residential school system a deliberate act of cultural genocide against First Nations peoples. In its report, the commission submitted 94 recommendations to the Canadian government, recommendations which, if implemented, would substantially improve indigenous race relations, increase quality of life for survivors and extended families, and help undo the damage caused by residential schools. While the Liberal government, under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has committed itself to improving the lives of Canada's indigenous people, and specifically to implementing the TRC recommendations, some of those recommendations may be beyond the power of the Canadian government. The countless research documents assembled by the TRC will be archived in a special repository at the University of Manitoba.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The income of women with status living off-reserve was on average $13,870 a year, according to a 1996 Canadian census. This is about $5500 less than non-Indigenous women, such as Inuit and Métis women, which recorded slightly higher average annual incomes; regardless of the small discrepancy, all of which are substantially less than Statistics Canada's estimated amount of which an individual living in a large Canadian city would require to meet their needs. It is not unlikely for Aboriginal women living in poverty to not only tend to their own needs, but often tend to the needs of their elderly parents, care for loved ones in ill-health, as well as raising children; all of which is often supported only on a single income. It is believed that homelessness and inadequate shelter are widespread problems facing Aboriginal families, in all settings.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: A paramount conclusion by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples is that the repeated assaults on the culture and collective identity of the Aboriginal people has resulted in a weakened foundation of Aboriginal society and has contributed to the alienation that inevitably drives some to self-destructive and antisocial behaviour. The social problems among Aboriginal people are, in large measure, a legacy of history.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Aboriginals are also more likely to be the victims of crime. This is particularly true in the younger population (aged 15–34), where acts of violence are two and a half times more likely to occur than in the older population. Domestic violence and sexual abuse against children is more prevalent in the Aboriginal population with sexual abuse affecting 25–50% of Aboriginal female children versus 20–25% of female children in the general population. Children who come from homes with a history of violence are at a greater risk of becoming the perpetrators of violence later in life. This is especially true of males.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: As of 2007, 17% of incarcerated individuals in Canada were of Aboriginal descent, despite representing only 2.7% of the general population. This is a sixfold increase in rates of incarceration within the Aboriginal population as opposed to the general Canadian population. There are many reasons for the over-representation of Aboriginals within the Canadian justice system. Lack of education, poverty, unemployment and abuse all lead to higher crime rates. Also, statistically, Aboriginals have a greater chance of conviction and subsequently, incarceration once convicted. They are also much less likely to receive parole during their sentence.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The Canadian federal government is responsible for health and social services on the reserve and in Inuit communities, while the provincial and territorial governments provide services elsewhere. The divide between each level of government has led to a gap in services for Aboriginal people living off-reserve and in Canadian towns and cities. Although Aboriginal people living off-reserve have access to the programs and services designed for the general population, these programs and services do not address the specific needs of Aboriginal people, nor is it delivered in a culturally appropriate way. It has not been until recently that the Canadian federal government had to increase recognition to the needs for programs and services for Aboriginal people in predominantly non-Aboriginal communities. It is however funding that lags the growth of urban Aboriginal populations and the uncoordinated delivery of services through various government departments would also pose as a barrier. The federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians pointed out that in 2003 almost 90 percent of the funding for programs designed for Aboriginal peoples is spent on reserves, while off-reserve programs for Aboriginal people are delivered through just 22 federal departments, as well as other provincial and territorial agencies. The federal subcommittee on Indigenous child welfare described a "jurisdictional web" in which there is little to no coordination with or between municipal, provincial and federal levels of government.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The health care services available to Aboriginal people is rarely delivered in a culturally sensitive approach. It is the constant cast of "the other" by the settler Canadian population that contaminates the delivery of such necessary services to Aboriginal peoples. It was argued by Ontario finance minister Jim Flaherty in 1992 that the Canadian government could boost health-care funding for "real people in real towns" by cutting the bureaucracy that serves only Aboriginal peoples. These types of statements, especially made by people often heard by a greater audience, are said to have detrimental and influential effects on the overall attitudes of settler population folks, as well as Aboriginal peoples.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: There are marked differences between the epidemiology of diabetes in First Nation population compared to the general population. Reasons for the different rate of Type 2 Diabetes between First Nation and the general population include a complex combination of environmental (lifestyle, diet, poverty) and genetic and biological factors (e.g. thrifty genotype hypothesis, thrifty phenotype) – though to what extent each factor plays a role is still not clear.<ref name="10.1503/cmaj.090846"></ref>


title: First Nations in Canada

text: The Aboriginal population in Canada (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) have a significantly higher prevalence rate of diabetes than the non-Aboriginal population. Age-standardized rates show that the prevalence of diabetes among First Nations individuals living on-reserve is 17.2%; First Nations individuals living off-reserve is 10.3%; Métis individuals 7.3%; and non-Aboriginal peoples at 5.0%. It is important to note that Aboriginal individuals are generally diagnosed at a younger age than non-Aboriginal individuals, and Aboriginal females experience higher rates of gestational diabetes than non-Aboriginal females. The complications and prevalence of diabetes are seen among the Aboriginal population more often than non-Aboriginal population. These may be attributed to the socio-cultural, biological, environmental and lifestyle changes seen in the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis populations, which have been most especially prevalent in the last half century, all of which contributing significantly to the increased rates of diabetes and the complications associated among the Aboriginal population.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: First Nations in Canada engage in a disproportionate amount of substance abuse. In Vancouver, Indigenous people were faced with almost 18 per cent of drug charges, but are just 2.2 per cent of the city's population. A much higher proportion of First Nations people engage in heavy drinking weekly (16%) as opposed to the general population (8%). 19% of First Nations also reported cocaine and opiates use, higher than 13% of the general Canadian population that reported using opioids.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Life expectancy at birth is significantly lower for First Nations babies than for babies in the Canadian population as a whole. , Indian and Northern Affairs Canada estimates First Nations life expectancy to be 8.1 years shorter for males and 5.5 years shorter for females. Where females in the general population had a life expectancy at birth of 82 years, First Nations females had a life expectancy of 76 years. In males the life expectancy for First Nations individuals was 69 years as opposed to 77 in the general population. The reasons behind the lower life expectancy for First Nations individuals are varied and complex; however, social determinants of health are thought to play a large part.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Overall, First Nations individuals have some of the highest rates of suicide globally. Suicide rates are more than twice the sex-specific rate and also three times the age-specific rates of non-Aboriginal Canadians. Residential Aboriginals between ages 10 and 29 show an elevated suicide risk as compared to non-residential Aboriginals by 5–6 times. One theory for the increased incidences of suicide within Aboriginal populations as compared to the general Canadian population is called acculturation stress which results from the intersection of multiple cultures within one's life. This leads to differing expectations and cultural clashes within the community, the family and the individual. At the community level, a general economic disadvantage is seen, exacerbated by unemployment and low education levels, leading to poverty, political disempowerment and community disorganization. The family suffers through a loss of tradition as they attempt to assimilate into mainstream Canadian culture. These lead to low self-esteem in the individual as First Nations culture and tradition are marginalized affecting one's sense of self-identity. These factors combine to create a world where First Nations individuals feel they cannot identify completely as Aboriginal, nor can they fully identify as mainstream Canadians. When that balance cannot be found, many (particularly youths) turn to suicide as a way out.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: 400 First Nations communities in Canada had some kind of water problem between 2004 and 2014. The residents of Neskantaga First Nation in Ontario have had a boil-water advisory since 1995. In 2015, newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to solve the drinking water problem within five years, by investing $1.8 billion. As of October 2021, long-term boil water advisories are still present in 32 First Nations drinking water systems.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Across Canada, many First Nations have not signed treaties with the Canadian Crown. Many First Nations are in the process of negotiating a modern treaty, which would grant them treaty rights. Some First Nation bands are also trying to resolve their historical grievances with the Canadian government. These grievances often originate from a breach of treaty obligations or of the "Indian Act" by the government of Canada. They can also involve mismanagement of indigenous land or assets by the Crown.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Across Canada, there has been a large number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women since 1980. 16% of female murder victims and 12% of missing women have been Aboriginal, while demographically they constitute only 4% of the overall female population. This amounts to almost 1,200 Aboriginal females either missing or murdered in just over 30 years.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: In 2014 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) released "Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Review". This publication documents the official findings of this demographic as well as advises for future change. It finds that there are 164 Aboriginal women still missing and 1,017 murdered, making for a total of 1,181. "There are 225 unsolved cases of either missing or murdered Aboriginal females: 105 missing for more than 30 days , whose cause of disappearance was categorized as 'unknown' or 'foul play suspected' and 120 unsolved homicides between 1980 and 2012." Indigenous women in Canada are overrepresented among the missing and murdered females in Canada. Additionally, there are shared characteristics among these cases: most of the murders were committed by men and were someone the victim knew, either a partner or an acquaintance. "Aboriginal women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 5 times more likely than other women of the same age to die as a result of violence." These statistics portray the severity and prevalence of violence against indigenous women in Canada.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Self-governance and preservation of indigenous territories become increasingly difficult as natural resources continue to be exploited by foreign companies. Projects such as "mining, logging, hydroelectric construction, large-scale export oriented agribusiness or oil exploration" are usually coupled with environmental degradation and occasionally violence and militarization." Many scholars go so far as to link the proliferation of global neoliberalism with a rise in violence. Women's concerns are nearly always pushed aside, to be addressed later; their safety is therefore often compromised and not deemed priority. Privatization of public services and reduction in the universality of health care produces negative repercussions for those of lower socioeconomic status in rural locations; these downsides are magnified for female Aboriginals.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Approximately 2,500 aboriginal people were murdered in Canada between 1982 and 2011, out of 15,000 murders in Canada overall. Of the 2,500 murdered aboriginal Canadians, fully 71 per cent — 1,750 — were male.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: According to summaries of seven consultation sessions posted to a government website, the desire to dedicate some attention to violence against indigenous men and boys has come up at four of the meetings.


title: First Nations in Canada

text: These calls to extend the scope of the inquiry to include missing and murdered aboriginal people of all genders have met with resistance and been criticized as detracting from the current focus on the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women. Barbara Bailey, who was on the UN team that visited Canada in 2013 to investigate the violence, has said, "I think to detract now would really be a tragedy. Let's fix that problem first and then we can begin to see what else is out there."


title: First Nations in Canada

text: Speaking on the matter, Minister of Indigenous Affairs, Carolyn Bennett has said, "Our mandate now is to get to the bottom of the tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada", citing sexism as being of specific concern. Dawn Lavell-Harvard, the president of the Native Women's Association of Canada, has also weighed in on the issue by saying, "Absolutely [men] deserve the same amount of attention, just not necessarily in the same forum", neither that forum nor an equal level of attention have yet to materialize.


title: Socialite

text: A socialite is a person from a wealthy and (possibly) aristocratic background, who is prominent in high society. A socialite generally spends a significant amount of time attending various fashionable social gatherings, instead of having traditional employment.


title: Socialite

text: The word "socialite" is first attested in 1909 in a California newspaper. It was popularized by "Time" magazine in the 1920s.


title: Socialite

text: Historically, socialites in the United Kingdom were almost exclusively from the families of the aristocracy and landed gentry. Many socialites also had strong familial or personal relationships to the British royal family.


title: Socialite

text: Between the 17th and early 19th centuries, society events in London and at country houses were the focus of socialite activity. Notable examples of British socialites include Beau Brummell, Lord Alvanley, the Marchioness of Londonderry, Daisy, Princess of Pless, Lady Diana Cooper, Mary Constance Wyndham, Lady Ursula d'Abo, Margaret Greville and the Mitford sisters. Since the 1960s, socialites have been drawn from a wider section of society more similar to the American model, with many socialites now coming from families in business or from the world of celebrity. Despite this, the notion of the Sloane ranger still emphasises many socialites' connections to Britain's ruling class. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is widely regarded as the current home of socialite activity in the UK. The television show "Made in Chelsea" has explored the lifestyles of young socialites living in London in the 21st century.


title: Socialite

text: American members of the Establishment, or an American "society" based on birth, breeding, education, and economic standing, were originally listed in the "Social Register", a directory of the names and addresses of the "preferred social contacts" of the prominent families in the 19th century. In 1886, Louis Keller started to consolidate these lists and package them for sale.


title: Socialite

text: The concept of socialites dates to the 18th and 19th century. Most of the earliest socialites were wives or mistresses of royalty or nobility, but being a socialite was more a duty and a means of survival than a form of pleasure. Bashful queens were often forced to play gracious and wealthy hostess to people who despised them. Mistresses had to pay for their social reputation and had to use their social skills to obtain favor in the court and retain the interest of their lovers.


title: Socialite

text: With the increase of wealth in the US in the 19th century, being a socialite developed into a role that brought power and influence.


title: Socialite

text: In the 21st century, the term "socialite" is still attached to being wealthy and socially recognized. The lines between being a socialite and celebrity with an exuberant partying lifestyle have since become blurred due to the influence of both popular culture and the media, particularly when the status of being a celebrity is largely due to that lifestyle. Celebrity Paris Hilton is an example of a 21st-century socialite due to her ability to attract media attention and fame based only on her connections and associations. Hilton is the great-granddaughter of Conrad Hilton, the founder of Hilton Hotels & Resorts, and heiress to the Hilton Hotel fortune. Due to her outrageous lifestyle, Hilton was hailed by the media as "New York's leading It Girl" in 2001.


title: Socialite

text: "Gossip Girl", an American television series airing between September 2007 and December 2012, focuses on the lives of New York City socialites who live on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The show is a strong influence on how socialites are regarded in the 21st century because of the presence of scandal, wealth, and fashion in each episode. Pop culture gives the impression that by simply being wealthy and fashionable, an individual has the opportunity to become famous. Consequently, it is an individual's ability to climb the social ladder due to his or her wealth and recognition that makes them a socialite.


title: Socialite

text: According to "The New York Times", socialites spend between $98,000 and $455,000 per year (young and old, respectively) to maintain their roles as successful socialites. Just the evening wardrobe of an individual regularly attending society functions can cost $100,000 annually. Examples of American socialites include: Kim Kardashian, Jill Kelley, Tinsley Mortimer, Olivia Palermo, Lauren Santo Domingo, Paris Hilton, Derek Blasberg, and Jean Shafiroff.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Paris, Texas is a 1984 road film directed by Wim Wenders and starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Nastassja Kinski, Aurore Clément and Hunter Carson. The screenplay was written by L. M. Kit Carson and playwright Sam Shepard, while the musical score was composed by Ry Cooder. The film is a co-production between companies in France and West Germany, and was shot in the United States by Robby Müller.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: The plot focuses on a vagabond named Travis (Stanton) who, after mysteriously wandering out of the desert in a dissociative fugue, attempts to reunite with his brother (Stockwell) and seven-year-old son (Carson). After reconnecting with his son, Travis and the boy end up embarking on a voyage through the American Southwest to track down Travis' long-missing wife (Kinski).


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: At the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, it won the "Palme d'Or" from the official jury, as well as the FIPRESCI Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. It went on to other honors and critical acclaim.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Travis Henderson walks alone through the West Texas desert in a fugue state, before stumbling into a bar and losing consciousness. A German doctor examines him and determines he is mute, but discovers he possesses a telephone number and calls it. The call is answered by Walt Henderson, Travis' brother from Los Angeles. Walt has not seen or had contact with Travis for four years, and agrees to travel to Terlingua, Texas, to retrieve him. His French wife, Anne, is concerned about the matter, as they have informally adopted Travis' son Hunter, with Hunter's biological mother Jane also missing. Walt reaches Terlingua, and finds Travis wandering from the clinic where he was found. The two brothers begin driving back to Los Angeles. With Walt becoming increasingly frustrated with Travis' muteness, Travis finally utters the name "Paris", asking to go there. Walt mistakenly assumes he means Paris, France. Farther down the road, Travis shows Walt a photograph of empty property in Paris, Texas, which he had purchased, believing he was conceived in that town.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: The brothers reach Los Angeles where Travis is reunited with Anne and Hunter. Hunter, aged seven, has very little memory of his father, and is wary of Travis until the family watches home movies from days when they were all together. Hunter realizes that Travis still loves Jane. As Hunter and Travis become reacquainted, Anne reveals to Travis that Jane has had contact with her, and makes monthly deposits into a bank account for Hunter. Anne has traced the deposits to a bank in Houston. Travis realizes he can possibly see Jane if he is at the Houston bank on the day of the next deposit, only a few days away. He acquires a cheap vehicle and borrows money from Walt. When he tells Hunter he is leaving, Hunter wishes to go with him, though he does not have Walt or Anne's permission.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Travis and Hunter drive to Houston, while Hunter recounts the Big Bang and the origins of Earth. A couple of hours after arriving at the Houston bank, Hunter identifies his mother in a car, making a drive-in deposit. He calls for Travis via walkie-talkie, and they follow her car to a peep-show club where she works. While Hunter waits outside, Travis goes in, finding the business has rooms with one-way mirrors, where clients converse with strippers via telephone. He eventually sees Jane, though she cannot see him, and leaves.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: The next day, Travis leaves Hunter at the Méridien Hotel in downtown Houston, with a message that he feels obliged to reunite mother and son, as he feels responsible for separating them in the first place. Travis returns to the peep show. Seeing Jane again, and with her seemingly unaware of who he is, he tells her a story, ostensibly about other people.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: He describes a man and younger girl who meet, marry and have a child. When the child is born, the wife suffers from postpartum blues and dreams of escaping from the family. The husband descends into alcoholism and becomes abusive, imprisoning her in the trailer they live in. After a failed attempt to escape, the man ties the woman to the trailer stove and goes to bed, dreaming of withdrawing to an unknown place "without language or streets" while his wife and child scream from the kitchen. He wakes up to find the trailer on fire and his family gone, and in despair runs for five days until leaving civilization entirely.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Jane realizes she is speaking with Travis, and that he is recounting the story of their relationship. He tells her that Hunter is in Houston and needs his mother. Jane has longed to be reunited with her boy, and that night, enters the hotel room where Hunter is waiting, while Travis watches from the parking lot. As Jane embraces Hunter, Travis climbs into his vehicle and drives away.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: West German director Wim Wenders had travelled to the United States and stated he wished "to tell a story about America". The film is named for the Texas city of Paris, but not set there in any scene. Instead, Paris is referred to as the location of a vacant lot owned by Travis that is seen in a photograph, and is used as a metaphor. Wenders had taken photographs like it while location scouting in the western U.S. earlier in his career, photographing locations such as Las Vegas and Corpus Christi, Texas.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Screenwriter Sam Shepard met Wenders to discuss writing and/or acting for Wenders' project "Hammett". Shepard said he was uninterested in writing "Hammett", but they considered loosely adapting Shepard's "Motel Chronicles", and developed a story of brothers, one having lost his memory. Their script grew to 160 pages, as the brother-brother relationship lessened in importance, and numerous endings were considered. Little of the funding for the project originated from Germany.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Harry Dean Stanton had appeared in 100 films before "Paris, Texas", with small roles in "Cool Hand Luke" and a large part in "Repo Man", which came out the same year as "Paris, Texas". He embraced the leading part of Travis, saying "After all these years, I finally got the part I wanted to play". However, Wenders also said Stanton was unsure of his part, and the age disparity between himself and the younger Nastassja Kinski (he was 34 years older). Wenders stated he had discovered Dean Stockwell as he was prepared to quit acting, finding no desirable roles and considering beginning a career in real estate. Hunter Carson was the son of co-screenwriter L. M. Kit Carson, and agreed to act while accompanied by his mother, Karen Black, who helped him memorize the dialogue.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Kinski wrote a diary for the character Jane to develop her backstory, imagining her emigrating from Europe, and getting more affection from Travis than she had from anyone. According to Stockwell, his character in early drafts was intended to travel with Hunter, Travis and Anne before Anne turned back to Los Angeles and Walt became lost in the desert, paralleling Travis in the first scene. Stockwell and Aurore Clément's parts were later reduced.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Wenders said the film, shot in only four to five weeks, with only a small group working the last weeks, was very short and fast. There was a break in shooting during which time the script was completed. Filmmaker Allison Anders worked as a production assistant on the film, while Claire Denis served as assistant director. Filming largely occurred in Fort Stockton and Marathon in the Trans-Pecos region of west Texas. The film marked Wenders' first time avoiding storyboarding completely, going straight to rehearsals on location before shooting.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Shooting had already started in 1983 when the screenplay was still incomplete, with the objective of filming in the order of the story. Shepard planned to base the rest of the story on the actors' observations and their understanding of the characters. However, when Shepard moved on to another job, he sent Wenders notes on how the screenplay should end instead. Shepard credited Wenders and L. M. Kit Carson with the idea of a peep show and the story's final acts. The filmmakers opted not to portray a realistic peep show, as they needed a format that allowed for more communication between the characters. Kinski could not see anyone, only a mirror, in the peep show scenes, and said this created a genuine feeling of solitude.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Challenges arose when the film ran short of finances, but Wenders was encouraged when they completed the scene with Kinski, remarking, "it dawned on me that we were going to touch people in a big way. I was a little scared by the idea".


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Robert Phillip Kolker and Peter Beickene wrote the film presents the U.S. as "a fantasyland, a place of striking images, a mise-en-scène of desert and city". Aside from the landscape, there are references to U.S. culture and film, and similarities to John Ford's 1956 film "The Searchers". Academic Roger Cook argued there is a connection between the character of Travis and his surroundings observable on the ride to California. The character gradually moves from the "desolate" to civilization, and Travis continually tries to break away from this difficult transition. His vehicles of choice possibly also reflect his characterization, as his preferred rental car has a bump, and he switches to a clearly used 1958 Ford Ranchero for his return to Texas.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Thomas Elsaesser discussed how "Paris, Texas" fit in with Wenders' depiction of women, saying many of the travels in his filmography are to find a particular woman. In the case of "Paris, Texas", this is with the aim of "escaping her 'now' in order to find her as she was 'then'". Kolker and Beickene commented on the lack of touch, or even "emotional fulfillment" between Travis and Jane at the end, aside from their faces merging in the glass and their discussions of their emotions.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Marc Silberman examined how personal identity is also a theme in the film, as the name "Paris" is deceptive, conjuring images of France but referring to Texas. This is evident in what Travis refers to as "Daddy's joke" about Travis' mother being from Paris, and his belief that he was conceived there causes him to believe going there will achieve self-realization. Elsaesser believed the ending signified Travis sending Hunter in his stead to reunite with Jane. Elsaesser found this to be an example of a complicated system in which various characters see each other through fantasy, and remake each other as they desire. Travis' father had seen his mother as a Parisian, and this became "a sickness".


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Cook opined that returning to the sanctuary of the road is Travis' response to having suffered the worst modern American experience, turning his son over to the boy's mother. Stan Jones suggested the story involves a European theory on perception, as Travis evolves as a character from the one who perceives, to a driving force, returning to perceiving, and then withdrawing. Jones quoted French critic Jean-Louis Comolli: "Never passive, a spectator works". The ending can also suggest hope for a fresh start for Jane and Hunter. Wenders himself said it marked a beginning for the next chapter in his own filmography, explaining Travis' exit: "This scene for me had a liberating effect ... I let him disappear in my own way, and all my previous male characters went with him. They have all taken up residence in a retirement home on the outskirts of Paris, Texas".


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: "Paris, Texas" belongs in the road movie genre, but "The Guardian" critic Guy Lodge suggested it could also be considered a western film. Stan Jones noted Mark Luprecht had classified "Paris, Texas" as a tragedy and had detected Oedipal themes in its depiction of family.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: "Paris, Texas" is notable for its images of the Texas landscape and climate. Wenders had emphasized roads in his earlier works, particularly his Road Movie trilogy, to depict "characters' journeys", with the setting of Texas removing the cultural boundaries of Europe. The opening gives an aerial perspective of the dry desert. Critic Emanuel Levy noted the shots that follow of "billboards, placards, graffiti, rusty iron carcasses, old railway lines, neon signs, motels". The film's production design was by Kate Altman. Cinematographer Robby Müller had frequently worked with Wenders, and the photography in "Paris, Texas" is characteristic of Müller's style, which director Steve McQueen defined as "a visual language to capture what appear to be men falling to their deaths in slow motion". "Senses of Cinema" critic Lee Hill also compared it to the art of Edward Hopper and Edward Ruscha.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: The film is accompanied by a slide-guitar score by Ry Cooder, employing Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground", which Cooder hailed as "the most transcendent piece in all American music". "Screen International" editor Nick Roddick wrote the music gives "a quality of yearning to the bleakness of the landscape". In 2018, Cooder revealed a specific source of inspiration during an interview on BBC Radio 4: "[Wenders] did a very good job at capturing the ambience out there in the desert, just letting the microphones ... get tones and sound from the desert itself, which I discovered was in the key of E♭ ... that's the wind, it was nice. So we tuned everything to E♭".


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: "Paris, Texas" competed at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, with Wenders claiming that Stanton was so anxious about Cannes that they hired Sean Penn to assist with Stanton's preparations for the screening. Roddick remarked on how the film's affectionate portrayal of the U.S. was well received by European filmmakers at Cannes at a time of high anti-Americanism, given the presidency of Ronald Reagan.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Conflicts between Wenders' Road Movies company and distributor Filmverlag over how many copies of "Paris, Texas" should be released in West Germany following Cannes caused it to be initially denied a theatrical release there, so bus tours were launched to transport German viewers to Zürich for showings. Road Movies launched a lawsuit to sever ties with Filmverlag, and the film reached West German theatres eight months later.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: It was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1985 and again in 2006 as part of the "Sundance Collection" category. It returned to Cannes for the Cannes Classics section of the 2014 Festival, after being restored by Cinepost. The film has been released on DVD and Blu-ray in Region 1 by The Criterion Collection.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, writing ""Paris, Texas" is a movie with the kind of passion and willingness to experiment that was more common fifteen years ago than it is now. It has more links with films like "Five Easy Pieces" and "Easy Rider" and "Midnight Cowboy", than with the slick arcade games that are the box-office winners of the 1980s. It is true, deep, and brilliant". "Variety"s Holly Willis praised the cinematography, and credited Wenders for a worthy European portrait of the U.S. Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" gave the film a mixed review, writing, "The film is wonderful and funny and full of real emotion as it details the means by which Travis and the boy become reconciled. Then it goes flying out the car window when father and son decide to take off for Texas in search of Jane". David Denby criticized "Paris, Texas" in "New York", calling it "lifeless" and a "fiasco". "Texas Monthly" boasted Paris, Texas was "The hottest Texas town in France", noting "Le Monde" placed a rave review of the film on its first page.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: It has had an enduring legacy among critics and film aficionados. In 2015, Guy Lodge of "The Guardian" named it a favorite "Palme d'Or"-winner, while "Texas Monthly" included it in its Best Texas Movies list for its depiction of Marathon, Texas. During the same year, "Paris, Texas" appeared on a posthumous list of Akira Kurosawa's 100 favorite movies. In 2016, "Entertainment Weekly" also included it in The 25 Best Texas Movies, while "The Texas Observer" critic Michael Agresta credited it with creating "a certain flavor of Texas cool". However, that year "The Hollywood Reporter" argued its prestige had lessened somewhat, naming it the 44th best "Palme d'Or"-winner to date. "Paris, Texas" has a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, based on 49 reviews with an average rating of 8.2 out of 10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A quiet yet deeply moving kind of Western, "Paris, Texas" captures a place and people like never before (or after)".


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: At Cannes, the film won three prizes: the "Palme d'Or", the FIPRESCI Prize, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. The decision from the main jury on the "Palme d'Or" was unanimous, with one of the members being French cinematographer Henri Alekan.


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: The Irish rock group U2 cited "Paris, Texas" as an inspiration for their album "The Joshua Tree". The Scottish bands Travis and Texas both took their names from this film. Musicians Kurt Cobain and Elliott Smith said this was their favorite film of all time. The film has also influenced later directors, with David Robert Mitchell, who made "It Follows" (2014), saying the aesthetics in its framing and composition were instructive. Wes Anderson was also inspired by Wenders' home movie scene with the photographs of the dead wife in "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001).


title: Paris, Texas (film)

text: In 1986, the photography Wenders took on his location scout for "Paris, Texas" was exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France, under the title "Written in the West". In 2000, these were published in a book also titled "Written in the West", with additional material in "Written in the West, Revisited" in 2015.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born September 3, 1956) is a British anti-vaccine activist, former physician, and discredited academic who was struck off the medical register for his involvement in "The Lancet" MMR autism fraud, a 1998 study that falsely claimed a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. He has subsequently become known for anti-vaccination activism. Publicity around the 1998 study caused a sharp decline in vaccination uptake, leading to a number of outbreaks of measles around the world. He was a surgeon on the liver transplant programme at the Royal Free Hospital in London and became senior lecturer and honorary consultant in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free and University College School of Medicine. He resigned from his positions there in 2001, "by mutual agreement", then moved to the United States. In 2004, Wakefield co-founded and began working at the Thoughtful House research center (now renamed Johnson Center for Child Health and Development) in Austin, Texas, serving as executive director there until February 2010, when he resigned in the wake of findings against him by the British General Medical Council.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield published his 1998 paper on autism in the prestigious medical journal "The Lancet", claiming to have identified a novel form of enterocolitis linked to autism. However, other researchers were unable to reproduce his findings, and a 2004 investigation by "Sunday Times" reporter Brian Deer identified undisclosed financial conflicts of interest on Wakefield's part. Wakefield reportedly stood to earn up to $43 million per year selling test kits. Most of Wakefield's co-authors then withdrew their support for the study's interpretations, and the General Medical Council (GMC) conducted an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield and two former colleagues, focusing on Deer's findings.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In 2010, the GMC found that Wakefield had been dishonest in his research, had acted against his patients' best interests and mistreated developmentally delayed children, and had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant". "The Lancet" fully retracted Wakefield's 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC's findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified and that the journal had been "deceived" by Wakefield. Three months later, Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register, in part for his deliberate falsification of research published in "The Lancet", and was barred from practising medicine in the UK. In a related legal decision, a British court held that "[t]here is now no respectable body of opinion which supports [Wakefield's] hypothesis, that MMR vaccine and autism/enterocolitis are causally linked".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield has continued to defend his research and conclusions, saying there was no fraud, hoax or profit motive. In 2016, Wakefield directed the anti-vaccination film "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield was born in 1956; his father was a neurologist and his mother was a general practitioner. After leaving the independent King Edward's School, Bath, Wakefield studied medicine at St Mary's Hospital Medical School (now Imperial College School of Medicine), fully qualifying in 1981.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: At the University of Toronto from 1986 to 1989, he was a member of a team that studied tissue rejection problems with small intestine transplantation, using animal models. He continued his studies of small intestine transplantation under a Wellcome Trust travelling fellowship at University of Toronto in Canada.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Back in the UK, he worked on the liver transplant programme at the Royal Free Hospital in London. In 1993, Wakefield attracted professional attention when he published reports in which he concluded that measles virus might cause Crohn's disease; and two years later he published a paper in "The Lancet" proposing a link between the measles vaccine and Crohn's disease. Subsequent research failed to confirm this hypothesis, with a group of experts in Britain reviewing a number of peer-reviewed studies in 1998 and concluding that the measles virus did not cause Crohn's disease, and neither did the MMR vaccine.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Later, in 1995, while conducting research into Crohn's disease, he was approached by Rosemary Kessick, the parent of a child with autism, who was seeking help with her son's bowel problems and autism; Kessick ran a group called Allergy Induced Autism. In 1996, Wakefield turned his attention to researching possible connections between the MMR vaccine and autism.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: At the time of his MMR research study, Wakefield was senior lecturer and honorary consultant in experimental gastroenterology at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine (from 2008, UCL Medical School). He resigned in 2001, by "mutual agreement and was made a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists", and moved to the US in 2001 (or 2004, by another account). He was reportedly asked to leave the Royal Free Hospital after refusing a request to validate his 1998 "Lancet" paper with a controlled study.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield subsequently helped establish and served as the executive director of Thoughtful House Center for Children, which studies autism in Austin, Texas, where, according to "The Times", he "continued to promote the theory of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, despite admitting it was 'not proved'." He resigned from Thoughtful House in February 2010, after the British General Medical Council found that he had been "dishonest and irresponsible" in conducting his earlier autism research in England. "The Times" reported in May 2010 that he was a medical advisor for Visceral, a UK charity that "researches bowel disease and developmental disorders".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield is barred from practising as a physician in the UK, and is not licensed in the US. He lives in the US where he has a following, including the anti-vaccinationist Jenny McCarthy, who wrote the foreword for Wakefield's autobiography, "Callous Disregard". She has a son with autism-like symptoms that she believes were caused by the MMR vaccine. According to Deer, , Wakefield lives near Austin with his family.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield has set up the non-profit Strategic Autism Initiative to commission studies into the condition, and is currently listed as a director of a company called Medical Interventions for Autism and another called the Autism Media Channel.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: On 28 February 1998, Wakefield was the lead author of a study of twelve children with autism that was published in "The Lancet". The study proposed a new syndrome called autistic enterocolitis, and raised the possibility of a link between a novel form of bowel disease, autism, and the MMR vaccine. The authors said that the parents of eight of the twelve children linked what were described as "behavioural symptoms" with MMR, and reported that the onset of these symptoms began within two weeks of MMR vaccination.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: These possible triggers were reported as MMR in eight cases, and measles infection in one. The paper was instantly controversial, leading to widespread publicity in the UK and the convening of a special panel of the UK's Medical Research Council the following month. One 2005 study in Japan found that there was no causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism in groups of children given the triple MMR vaccine and children who received individual measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations. In Japan, the MMR vaccine had been replaced with individual vaccinations in 1993.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Although the paper said that no causal connection had been proven, before it was published, Wakefield made statements at a press conference and in a video news release issued by the hospital, calling for suspension of the triple MMR vaccine until more research could be done. This was later criticized as 'science by press conference'. According to BBC News, it was this press conference, rather than the paper in "The Lancet", that fuelled the MMR vaccination scare. The BBC report said he told journalists: "it was a 'moral issue' and he could no longer support the continued use of the three-in-one jab for measles, mumps and rubella. 'Urgent further research is needed to determine whether MMR may give rise to this complication in a small number of people,' Wakefield said at the time." He said, "If you give three viruses together, three live viruses, then you potentially increase the risk of an adverse event occurring, particularly when one of those viruses influences the immune system in the way that measles does." He suggested parents should opt for single vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella, separated by gaps of one year. "60 Minutes" interviewed him in November 2000, and he repeated these claims to the U.S. audience, providing a new focus for the nascent anti-vaccination movement in the U.S., which had been primarily concerned about thiomersal in vaccines.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In December 2001, Wakefield resigned from the Royal Free Hospital, saying, "I have been asked to go because my research results are unpopular." The medical school said that he had left "by mutual agreement". In February 2002, Wakefield stated: "What precipitated this crisis was the removal of the single vaccine, the removal of choice, and that is what has caused the furore—because the doctors, the gurus, are treating the public as though they are some kind of moronic mass who cannot make an informed decision for themselves."


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield continued to conduct clinical research in the United States after leaving the Royal Free Hospital in December 2001. He joined a controversial American researcher, Jeff Bradstreet, at the International Child Development Resource Center, to conduct further studies on the possible relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In 2004, Wakefield began working at the Thoughtful House research center in Austin, Texas. Wakefield served as executive director of Thoughtful House until February 2010, when he resigned in the wake of findings against him by the British General Medical Council.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In February 2004, the controversy resurfaced when Wakefield was accused of a conflict of interest. In "The Sunday Times", Brian Deer reported that some of the parents of the 12 children in the study in "The Lancet" were recruited via a UK lawyer preparing a lawsuit against MMR manufacturers, and that the Royal Free Hospital had received £55,000 from the UK's Legal Aid Board (now the Legal Services Commission) to pay for the research. Previously, in October 2003, the board had cut off public funding for the litigation against MMR manufacturers. Following an investigation of the allegations in "The Sunday Times" by the UK General Medical Council, Wakefield was charged with serious professional misconduct, including dishonesty. In December 2006, Deer, writing in "The Sunday Times", further reported that in addition to the money they donated to the Royal Free Hospital, the lawyers responsible for the MMR lawsuit had paid Wakefield personally more than £400,000, which he had not previously disclosed.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Twenty-four hours before the 2004 "Sunday Times" report by Deer, "The Lancet"s editor Richard Horton responded to the investigation in a public statement, describing Wakefield's research as "fatally flawed" and said he believed the paper would have been rejected as biased if the peer reviewers had been aware of Wakefield's conflict of interest. Ten of Wakefield's twelve co-authors of the paper in "The Lancet" later published a retraction of an interpretation. The section of the paper retracted read as follows:


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In November 2004, Channel 4 broadcast a one-hour "Dispatches" investigation by reporter Brian Deer; the "Toronto Star" said Deer had "produced documentary evidence that Wakefield applied for a patent on a single-jab measles vaccine before his campaign against the MMR vaccine, raising questions about his motives".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In addition to Wakefield's unpublished initial patent submission, Deer released a copy of the published patent application. At page 1, the first paragraph of this stated:


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Before describing the research in Wakefield's 1998 paper in "The Lancet", at the same page this patent explicitly states that the use of the MMR vaccine causes autism:


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: According to Deer, a letter from Wakefield's lawyers to him dated 31 January 2005 said: "Dr Wakefield did not plan a rival vaccine."


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In the "Dispatches" programme, Deer also revealed that Nicholas Chadwick, a researcher working under Wakefield's supervision in the Royal Free medical school, had failed to find measles virus in the children reported on in "The Lancet".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In January 2005, Wakefield initiated libel proceedings against Channel 4, the independent production company Twenty Twenty and Brian Deer, "The Sunday Times", and against Deer personally along with his website briandeer.com in the case "Wakefield v Channel Four Television and Others" [2006] EWHC 3289 (QB); [2007] 94 BMLR 1. Within weeks of issuing his claims, however, Wakefield sought to have the action frozen until after the conclusion of General Medical Council proceedings against him. Channel 4 and Deer sought a High Court order compelling Wakefield to continue with his action, or discontinue it. After a hearing on 27 and 28 October 2005, Justice David Eady ruled against a stay of proceedings:


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: The judgment identified Channel 4's "very lengthy extracts" summarizing Deer's allegations against Wakefield:


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Eady's ruling states that, "The views or conclusions of the GMC disciplinary body would not, so far as I can tell, be relevant or admissible", that Channel 4's allegations "go to undermine fundamentally the Claimant's professional integrity and honesty", and that, "It cannot seriously be suggested that priority should be given to GMC proceedings for the resolution of issues."


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In December 2006, Deer released records obtained from the Legal Services Commission, showing that it had paid £435,643 in undisclosed fees to Wakefield for the purpose of building a case against the MMR vaccine. Those payments, "The Sunday Times" reported, had begun two years before publication of Wakefield's paper in "The Lancet". Within days of Deer's report, Wakefield dropped all his libel actions and was ordered to pay all defendants' legal costs.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield's data was also questioned; a former graduate student, who appeared in Deer's programme, later testified that Wakefield ignored laboratory data that conflicted with his hypothesis. An independent investigation of a collaborating laboratory questioned the accuracy of the data underpinning Wakefield's claims.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In June 2005, the BBC programme "Horizon" reported on an unnamed and unpublished study of blood samples from a group of 100 autistic children and 200 children without autism. They reported finding 99% of the samples contained no trace of the measles virus, and the samples that did contain the virus were just as likely to be from non-autistic children, i.e., only three samples contained the measles virus, one from an autistic child and two from a typically developing child. The study's authors found no evidence of any link between MMR and autism.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the United States National Academy of Sciences, along with the CDC and the UK National Health Service, have found no link between vaccines and autism. Reviews in the medical literature have also found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism or with bowel disease, which Wakefield called "autistic enterocolitis".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Between July 2007 and May 2010, a 217-day "fitness to practise" hearing of the UK General Medical Council examined charges of professional misconduct against Wakefield and two colleagues involved in the paper in "The Lancet". The charges included that he:


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield denied the charges; on 28 January 2010, the GMC ruled against Wakefield on all issues, stating that he had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted against the interests of his patients, and "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his controversial research. On 24 May 2010, he was struck off the United Kingdom medical register. It was the harshest sanction that the GMC could impose, and effectively ended his career as a physician. In announcing the ruling, the GMC said that Wakefield had "brought the medical profession into disrepute", and no sanction short of erasing his name from the register was appropriate for the "serious and wide-ranging findings" of misconduct. On the same day, Wakefield's autobiography, "Callous Disregard" was published, using the same words as one of the charges against him ("he showed callous disregard for any distress or pain the children might suffer"). Wakefield argued that he had been unfairly treated by the medical and scientific establishment.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In February 2009, "The Sunday Times" reported that a further investigation by the newspaper had revealed that Wakefield "changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism", citing evidence obtained by the newspaper from medical records and interviews with witnesses, and supported by evidence presented to the GMC.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In April 2010, Deer expanded on laboratory aspects of his findings in a report in the "BMJ", recounting how normal clinical histopathology results (obtained from the Royal Free hospital) had been subjected to wholesale changes, from normal to abnormal, in the medical school and published in "The Lancet". On 2 January 2011, Deer provided two tables comparing the data on the twelve children, showing the original hospital data and the data with the wholesale changes as used in the 1998 "The Lancet" article.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: On 5 January 2011, "BMJ" published an article by Brian Deer entitled "How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed". Deer said that, based on examination of the medical records of the 12 children in the original study, his research had found:


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In a "BMJ" follow-up article on 11 January 2011, Deer stated that Wakefield had planned to capitalize on the MMR vaccination scare provoked by his paper. He said that based upon documents he had obtained under Freedom of information legislation, Wakefield—in partnership with the father of one of the boys in the study—had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing". "The Washington Post" reported that Deer said that Wakefield predicted he "could make more than $43 million a year from diagnostic kits" for the new condition, autistic enterocolitis. According to Deer's report in "BMJ", the ventures, Immunospecifics Biotechnologies Ltd and Carmel Healthcare Ltd—named after Wakefield's wife—failed after Wakefield's superiors at University College London's medical school gave him a two-page letter that said:


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: WebMD reported on Deer's "BMJ" report, saying that the $43 million predicted yearly profits would come from marketing kits for "diagnosing patients with autism" and that "the initial market for the diagnostic will be litigation-driven testing of patients with AE [autistic enterocolitis, an unproven condition concocted by Wakefield] from both the UK and the US". According to WebMD, the "BMJ" article also claimed that Carmel Healthcare Ltd. would succeed in marketing products and developing a replacement vaccine if "public confidence in the MMR vaccine was damaged".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In October 2012, research published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identified Wakefield's 1998 paper as the most cited retracted scientific paper, with 758 citations, and gave the "reason for retraction" as "fraud".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: On 2 February 2010, "The Lancet" formally retracted Wakefield's 1998 paper. The retraction states: "The claims in the original paper that children were 'consecutively referred' and that investigations were 'approved' by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false."


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: The following day, the editor of a specialist journal, "NeuroToxicology", withdrew another Wakefield paper that was in press. The article, which concerned research on monkeys, had already been published online and sought to implicate vaccines in autism.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In May 2010, "The American Journal of Gastroenterology" retracted a paper of Wakefield's that used data from the 12 patients of the article in "The Lancet".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: On 5 January 2011, "British Medical Journal" editors recommended that Wakefield's other publications should be scrutinized and retracted if need be.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In an Internet radio interview, Wakefield said the "BMJ" series "was utter nonsense" and denied "that he used the cases of the 12 children in his study to promote his business venture". Deer has filed financial disclosure forms and rejects Wakefield's claim that he is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. According to CNN, Wakefield said the patent he held was for "an 'over-the-counter nutritional supplement' that boosts the immune system". WebMD reported that Wakefield said he was the victim of "a ruthless, pragmatic attempt to crush any attempt to investigate valid vaccine safety concerns".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield says that Deer is a "hit man who was brought in to take [him] down" and that other scientists have simply taken Deer at his word. While on "Anderson Cooper 360°", he said that he had not read the "BMJ" articles yet, but he denied their validity and denied that Deer had interviewed the families of the children in the study. He also urged viewers to read his book, "Callous Disregard", which he said would explain why he was being targeted, to which Anderson Cooper replied: "But sir, if you're lying, then your book is also a lie. If your study is a lie, your book is a lie."


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield later implied that there is a conspiracy by public health officials and pharmaceutical companies to discredit him, including suggesting they pay bloggers to post rumours about him on websites or that they artificially inflated reports of deaths from measles.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In January 2012, Wakefield filed a defamation lawsuit in Texas state court against Deer, Fiona Godlee, and the "BMJ" for false accusations of fraud, seeking a jury trial in Travis County. The filing identified Wakefield as a resident of Austin, and cited the "Texas Long-Arm Statute" as justification for initiating the proceeding in Texas. The "BMJ" responded that it stood by its reports and would "defend the claim vigorously". In August 2012 District Court Judge Amy Meachum dismissed Wakefield's suit for lack of jurisdiction. Her ruling was upheld on appeal in September 2014 and Wakefield was ordered to pay all parties' costs.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: On 5 April 2011, Deer was named the UK's specialist journalist of the year in the British Press Awards, organised by the Society of Editors. The judges said that Deer's investigation of Wakefield was a "tremendous righting of a wrong".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Physicians, medical journals, and editors have made statements tying Wakefield's fraudulent actions to various epidemics and deaths. Michael J. Smith, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Louisville, an "infectious diseases expert who has studied the autism controversy's effect on immunization rates", said, "Clearly, the results of this [Wakefield] study have had repercussions."


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: Wakefield's study and his claim that the MMR vaccine might cause autism led to a decline in vaccination rates in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, and a corresponding rise in measles and mumps infections, resulting in serious illness and deaths. His continued claims that the vaccine is harmful have contributed to a climate of distrust of all vaccines and the reemergence of other previously controlled diseases.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: A profile in a "New York Times Magazine" article commented:Journalist Brian Deer called for criminal charges against Wakefield.


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: On 1 April 2011, the James Randi Educational Foundation awarded Wakefield the Pigasus Award for "refusal to face reality".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: A 2011 journal article described the vaccine-autism connection as "the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years".


title: Andrew Wakefield

text: In 2011, Wakefield was at the top of the list of the worst doctors of 2011 in "Medscape's" list of "Physicians of the Year: Best and Worst". In January 2012, "Time" magazine named Wakefield in a list of "Great Science Frauds". In 2012 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement in Quackery award by the Good Thinking Society.