Making History: CONTRIBUTIONS OF FACULTY MEMBERS IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

This exhibit is temporarily unavailable while it undergoes a thorough review by University of Toronto Libraries staff.

Important concerns have been raised by community members and allies about the way Dr. Fredrick Tisdall's research was contextualized in the exhibit. We take these concerns very seriously.

Dr. Tisdall's unethical research on Indigenous children was completely unacceptable and this should have been made unambiguously clear in the exhibit when it was published a number of years ago. For this reason, we have taken the exhibit down for a thorough review.

In 2018, we consulted with historians and Indigenous community members at the University of Toronto regarding this description. However, our resulting description was too ambiguous, specifically in the approach towards balance. The unintentional result was a text that does not condemn Tisdall and his influence and leadership in child nutrition trials non-consensually enacted on Indigenous children in Residential Schools. Our staff will review the entire exhibit with a lens to critically examining the legacies of the researchers profiled, and will add appropriate and thorough context before republishing. We also commit to taking a trauma informed approach to this re-description, if re-description is deemed the appropriate response moving forward.

The University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) is committed to creating a safe, welcoming, and inclusive environment, including in our online spaces. We share in the grief and outrage that many have been feeling so keenly following the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a former Residential School in Kamloops. Ensuring that the information we make available about Dr. Tisdall's research is thorough and appropriately contextualized is one important way we can do our part to work toward Indigenous justice.