All of it was the brainchild of 79-year-old American psychologist Dr. James Hardt, whose neurofeedback program has been endorsed by self-help guru Tony Robbins and featured on CNN’s Larry King Live. Hardt says brain school can make participants smarter and happier. He says it can also allow them to levitate, walk on water and visit angels.
The study focused on four schools in Prince Albert with high populations of Indigenous students. According to Hardt, 60 children aged 12 to 15 participated, along with one parent or guardian each.
Writing in the Advances Journal in the spring of 2013, just as the Prince Albert study was being proposed, Hardt said “the schools up there have up to 85 per cent Aboriginal students and many teachers are Aboriginal so it would be a really good case study; a lot of drugs, a lot of absenteeism.”
For Ian Mosby, a medical historian from Toronto Metropolitan University with expertise in Canada’s mistreatment of Indigenous people through clinical research, that approval was “shocking.”
“The entire project was very weird,” said Mosby. “The roadblocks were not put in place — the basic safety roadblocks.”
He said that’s especially surprising given the study was largely focused on Indigenous kids, "who have already in the past been exploited through medical experimentation and whose communities are regularly exploited economically and politically.”
“To expose a child to that process is abuse, in my eyes,” said Amanda LaVallee, an assistant professor of social work from the University of Victoria who went through the Biocybernaut training herself.
How does that just get blindly rubber stamped and funded for so long that’s insane
Canada has a long history of doing colonialist shit like this … (see the Kenora residential school nutritional study and other medical experiments done on residential school children).
I would have thought our gov’t officials wouldn’t have had their collective heads stuck up their asses so far to OK this “study” tho. Guess they were never taught the history.
I know a bit about Canada’s history there, I appreciate you sharing more information.
The level of disregard our society has for indigenous populations and the injustices they suffer is heartbreaking and infuriating, most people seem to think it’s either a problem of the past or an uncomfortable conversation to ignore
Yup. Far too many ignore the benefits they and their families have received by denying Inuit, First Nations and Metis rights. I’ve heard people I truly love deny any responsibility for reparations, thinking bootstrapping works even when one has no boots.