Two enduring narratives mark the history of health care in Canada in the decades after 1945. The better known story is the celebrated and progressive account of the path to Medicare from a hardscrabble provincial plan to the definition of national health. The other story, by contrast, chronicles the seeming intractability of ill-health in Aboriginal communities. In this session, Maureen Lux examines these contradictory narratives by discussing segregated hospital care and the struggle for the treaty right to health care.