Content warning: mention of residential schools, the Indian Act, and domestic abuse.
Dr. Lillian Eva Quan Dyck is a neuroscientist, a Cree woman and member of the George Gordon First Nation, and a Chinese Canadian. Throughout her career she made advances in science and advocated for Indigenous and women’s rights. She makes the distinction that the way Western science is defined and practiced is limiting.
As a student at the intersection of psychology and gender studies, studying the mind and behaviour fascinates me; however, I recognize that psychology has contributed to the marginalization of people of colour. An example of unethical experimentation specific to Canada was the inhumane, government-mandated nutrition research that involved Indigenous children attending residential schools.
Dyck was the first Indigenous woman in Canada to earn a PhD in science. Dyck studied neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. She was also a neuropsychiatry educator and explored the firewater myth which is the misconception that Indigenous people are predisposed to substance use disorder (especially the use of alcohol), which is rooted in colonial oppression. The truth is that substance use among Indigenous people is often a result of colonial violence and socioeconomic stressors.
In 1996, Dyck published an article in the University of Saskatchewan’s Native Studies Review that examined how the “modern Western hemisphere” defines science in a limited framework. She used the medicine wheel of the Plains Peoples to characterize Western, feminist, and Indigenous science. Indigenous medicine wheels have four quadrants each representing the connections between the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual elements of the natural world. Each quadrant is also associated with cardinal directions, seasons, stages of life, and elements of nature. The specifics of each quadrant vary depending on the Indigenous group, but for the Plains People, the north is associated with the mental aspect and wisdom, east with the spiritual and beginnings, south with emotion and growth, and west with the physical and adulthood. Science should involve “honouring the Aboriginal woman in the scientist,” Dyck wrote, explaining that she speaks three languages: “the scientist,” “the feminist,” and “the Aboriginal,” which are all interdependent.
“The scientific method itself is thought to be immune from bias” but scientific knowledge is “a product limited by and tainted with the values of the culture that produces it.”
— Dr. Lillian Eva Quan Dyck
“The scientific method itself is thought to be immune from bias” but scientific knowledge is “a product limited by and tainted with the values of the culture that produces it,” Dyck wrote.
Dyck was also the first First Nations woman and Canadian-born Chinese to work in the Canadian senate.
She oversaw two significant reports on Indigenous education reform. “Reforming First Nations Education: From Crisis to Hope” was about improving education for Indigenous Peoples on reserves, which was and still is disproportionately underfunded compared to off-reserve schools. “How Did We Get Here? A Concise, Unvarnished Account of the History of the Relationship Between Indigenous Peoples and Canada” concerned the inaccurate historical accounts of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous Peoples.
Dyck started learning about her Indigenous identity later in life. Her mother, Eva, attended residential school, where she was forced to repress her Indigenous identity and was at the receiving end of colonialism. This experience made her believe that it would be easier for her children to identify as Chinese Canadian.
Being Chinese Canadian also came with its own deep history of discrimination. Through the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 and the Chinese Head Tax, Dyck’s father was discriminated against upon immigrating to Canada. In 2006, Canada gave a formal apology following advocacy by Dyck and others.
Perhaps most noteworthy was Dyck’s proposed bill, Bill S-215. If passed, it would have ensured that the severity of punishment would be greater for offenders if the victim was an Indigenous woman. According to a 2023 report by Statistics Canada between 2009 and 2021, Indigenous women and girls were six times more likely than non-Indigenous women and girls to be homicide victims. It didn’t get passed as its own bill, but when Bill C-75 came into effect, a section noted that cases involving abuse of an intimate partner be a sentencing factor, especially if the victim was an Indigenous woman.
Dyck is a remarkable person in Northern Turtle Island. She improved the lives of many through her fight for Indigenous women and girls and has made an unforgettable imprint on legal and scientific histories. As a person who is deeply interested in research and in improving women’s lives, I am grateful to have learned about the accomplishments that she achieved.
