For much of the twentieth century, both the United States and Canada funded research programs that explored human psychology, behavior, and cognition. Often carried out in the name of science or even national security, there were also unsettling experiments, some of which were conducted on children.
For instance, a recently resurfaced 1943 study documents extrasensory perception (ESP) experiments that were performed on Indigenous children at a Canadian residential school. Since its rediscovery, the paper has become part of a broader historical reckoning over how scientific research intersected with assimilation policies and Cold War intelligence programs.
The study also highlights the way Indigenous communities have often been disproportionately targeted and placed at the forefront of such programs. Exposing these atrocities has been an ongoing struggle, as researchers continue seeking truth, accountability, and justice for the victims.
Residential schools were government- and church-run institutions in Canada where Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families to live and study. The main goal was to assimilate them into European-Canadian culture through a federally funded colonization program.
The residential school system in Canada began in 1831, with the last school closing and federal funding ending in 1996. This means some survivors are still living today, some as young as their early 30s. The first school to open was the Mohawk Institute, and the last to close was the Gordon Residential School. During the decades these schools operated, survivors experienced a range of abuses, including sexual assault, physical abuse, and neglect, in some cases resulting in death. To date, 4,117 death records of children and more than 1,000 potential unmarked graves have been documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Some researchers believe the number may be higher, possibly closer to 10,000.
Psychic Testing on Indigenous Students
In January 2015, Canadian researcher Maeengan Linklater, Anishinaabe, of the Lac Seul First Nation in Ontario, discovered a study titled “ESP Tests with American Indian Students” by A. A. Foster in The Journal of Parapsychology (1943). The paper described psychic experiments conducted on First Nations students at the Brandon Indian Residential School during the Second World War.
“Ten years ago, I was employed as the Aboriginal program coordinator for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights,” Linklater later explained in a recent interview. “And during that time, I was at this festival in Winnipeg, and part of it was this little bookstore they had. I was looking through some books, and there was this book by (Canadian author) Chris Rutkowski. Then there was this blurb about Brandon First Nations students at the Brandon Indian Residential School, and I was like, this is really strange.”
“Considering that I had access to all of these academic journals where I was working, I made some inquiries,” Linklater said.
What he found was both surprising and disturbing: Linklater learned that former students had been subjected to ESP experiments in the 1940s. The discovery prompted him to bring the decades-old journal article to the attention of mainstream media to raise awareness of the issue, and the coverage reached more than a million people in Canada, appearing on APTN News, the CBC, The Washington Post, and other outlets.
Little is known about A. A. Foster, the study’s author, though he is believed to have been affiliated with the parapsychology laboratory at Duke University, a center known for ESP research. The study also contributed to broader findings that Indigenous children were involved in various scientific experiments in Canada, some federally funded, during the 1940s and 1950s.
“When it came to science experiments, these students had no choice whether it involved experiments on ESP or nutrition,” Dr. Ian Mosby, a historian of food, Indigenous health, and settler colonialism at Toronto Metropolitan University, told The Brandon Sun in 2015. “It makes you ask the question: What experiments were done in these schools? What were the conditions that made it possible for scientists to walk in and do these experiments? The children were wards of the state.”
Some documented experiments included nutritional studies in which children were deliberately kept on restricted diets. Research has found that milk rations were controlled across several residential schools, and vitamins were withheld. At Cecilia Jeffrey School in Kenora, Ontario, students were also used in trials of experimental vaccines and antibiotics, including treatments for tuberculosis and ear infections. Some Indigenous students reportedly lost their hearing as a result.
“If that happened today, how would we feel if those were our kids?” said Jamie Wilson of the Treaty Relations Commission of Manitoba in a 2015 CBC interview.
The 1943 ESP Study
The 1943 journal article explains its purpose: “While the primary interest of the writer in the work presented in this paper lay in the comparison of scoring success obtained with a new technique for testing ESP ability and that resulting from an older standard method, doubtless for many readers its principal feature will be the utilization of American Indian children as subjects in the tests. This is, so far as is known, the first report of ESP tests with Indian [subjects].”
The paper describes Miss D. Doyle, a matron at the Brandon residential school, who is quoted as saying, “The tests were carried out on Plains Indians at the Indian Residential School at Brandon, Manitoba, in an environment very different from their natural one.” The paper categorized the children by background and reported that participants ranged in age from 2 to 20 years old.
Doyle added that the subjects were of both sexes, though scheduling difficulties limited participation by boys. At the end of the experiments, children received candy as a reward regardless of their scores.
The paper notes that the final group of ten participants was selected based on both test scores and willingness to continue. The overall testing occurred for approximately one year (1940–1941). The author also wrote that publication had been delayed “due to the pressure of war work,” and described some subjects as “untrustworthy either by reason of youth or disposition.”
The experiments were said to follow procedures similar to the Screen Touch Matching (STM) method used at the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory. STM tests are matching tasks in which a person attempts to identify a hidden target using guesswork—or, as researchers hoped, extrasensory perception (ESP). These tests have been used in ESP research since the 1930s.
Human Testing, Government Programs, and Unverified Claims
Other examples of human experimentation related to the workings of the mind have been documented in Cold War intelligence programs. From the 1950s to the 1970s, U.S. programs such as Project Artichoke (initially known as Project Bluebird), the predecessor to what became known as Project MKUltra in 1953, subjected individuals—often without informed consent—to experiments involving drugs and psychological manipulation in the name of national security. Such programs, operated by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, remained unknown to the public for many years.
Last year in Canada, a Quebec Superior Court judge authorized a class-action lawsuit for victims of MKUltra-related experiments conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal under Dr. Ewen Cameron. CBC reported the lawsuit names the Royal Victoria Hospital, McGill University, and the Government of Canada as defendants, which reportedly authorized “depatterning treatments” that aimed to break patients in both mind and body.
“The Applicants submit that the Montreal Experiments were conducted without the informed consent of the patients,” a portion of the ruling read, “or even without their knowledge.” Lead plaintiff Julie Tanny told The Canadian Press that as many as 300 families could potentially join the class action lawsuit.
Other U.S. government efforts that attempted to explore alleged psychic abilities have come to light over the decades. Project Stargate, a classified program active during the 1970s and 1980s, examined whether individuals could use extrasensory perception to gather intelligence for espionage purposes. Operated by the U.S. Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the effort worked with researchers at Stanford Research Institute to develop techniques that later became known as “remote viewing.” The program was ultimately terminated and declassified in 1995, and scientific evidence supporting such alleged abilities remains lacking.
Still, the echoes of such past programs have persisted into recent years, occasionally manifesting in unverified claims from former participants of programs that include the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program. Some participants have speculated they were unknowingly involved in secret government research, where certain assignments and related tasks—such as decoding and problem‑solving exercises—were connected to alleged covert programs. Such allegations include statements last year by Jordan Jozak, a self-described “psionic asset,” who claims he was recruited into a covert program during childhood that aimed to cultivate his psychic abilities. The claims, like others made in recent years involving such alleged programs, remain unverified.
While such modern claims remain unproven, their place in our culture seems to be an outgrowth of the growing public knowledge involving the documented history of human experimentation in the U.S. and Canada; realities that ensure that questions about ethics, consent, and accountability in scientific research have not faded with time.
Truth and Reconciliation
In Canada, several efforts are underway that aim to make reparations for abuses sustained by children who attended residential schools a priority for both the government and the public.
As part of its mission to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation,” the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has introduced its 94 Calls to Action to create a path toward accountability and healing, including addressing historical injustices and promoting meaningful change for Indigenous communities.
“With the movement toward reconciliation, September 30 has been recognized as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation,” Linklater recently said. “This day provides opportunities for commemoration and remembrance, honoring those affected as well as survivors and their descendants.”
In this context, the rediscovery of the 1943 study is more than just a historical curiosity: it is becoming part of a broader reckoning. Fundamentally, its significance today lies not in what researchers at the time hoped to prove, but in what it is now helping to reveal about Canada’s past: that vulnerable children became subjects of experiments, and why confronting that history remains essential to reconciliation.
Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and founder of VOCAB Communications. She currently appears on The Discovery Channel and Max and hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on YouTube and on all audio podcast streaming platforms. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton, Instagram: @BeingChrissyNewton, and chrissynewton.com.