Timely deaths: Medicalizing the deaths of aboriginal people in police custody

Law, Culture and the Humanities

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2013, Pages 352-374

  Razack, Sherene H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

Aboriginal; Colonial violence; Inquests; Medicalization

Indexed keywords

EID: 84878394929     PISSN: 17438721     EISSN: 17439752     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1743872111407022     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. Achille Mbembe, "Necropolitics," Public Culture 15(1) (2003), p. 35.
2. Coroner's Inquest into the Death of Pl W (2008) (Coroners Service of British Columbia), pp. 83-4.
3. Coroner's Inquest into the Death of SQ, May 27, 2008 (Coroners Service of British Columbia), p. 56.
4. Jennifer Rutherford, Gauche Intruder (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000), p. 82.
5. Clare Beckett, "Deaths in Custody and the Inquest System," Critical Social Policy 19(2) (1999), p. 271.
6. Phil Scraton and Kathryn Chadwick, "Speaking ill of the dead: Institutionalised Responses to Deaths in Custody," Journal of Law and Society 13(1) (Spring 1986), p. 95.
7. Op. cit., p. 111.
8. Sherene Razack, "When Place becomes Race," in Sherene Razack, ed., Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2004), p. 1.
9. Phil Scraton, "Lost Lives, Hidden Voices: 'Truth' and Controversial Deaths," Race & Class 44(1) (2002), p. 110.
10. Op. cit., p. 109.
11. Carole Blackburn, "Searching for Guarantees in the Midst of Uncertainty: Negotiating Aboriginal Rights and Title in British Columbia," American Anthropologist 107(4) (2005), pp. 586-96.
12. Commissioner Wooten quoted in Chris Cunneen, "Aboriginal Deaths in Custody: A Continuing Systematic Abuse," Social Justice 33(4) (2006), p. 38.
13. A. C. Hamilton and C. M. Sinclair (1991). Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba, Vol. 1: The Justice System and Aboriginal People. Manitoba Public Inquiry into the Administration of Justice and First Nations People; Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. "Bridging the Cultural Divide: A Report on Aboriginal People and the Justice System in Canada." Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1996.
14. BC Coroners Service Statistics 1992-2007: BC Custody / Police-Involved Deaths. Available: http://www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/coronoers/index.hm
15. The Davies Commission: Inquiry into the Death of Frank Paul (William H. Davies, Q.C., Commissioner). Testimony of January 25, 2007 p. 77. Available: http://www.frankpaulinquiry.ca/ Accessed November 7, 2010. For a discussion of the difficulties collecting statistics
16. Mandy Cheema, "Missing Subjects: Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Data Problems, and Racialized Policing." Appeal: Rev. Current L. & L. Reform, 14 (2009): 84-99.
17. For a review of the arguments over the statistics of Aboriginal over-incarceration see Jonathan Rudin and Kent Roach, "Broken Promises: A Response to Stenning and Roberts' 'Empty Promises,'" Saskatchewan Law Review 65 (2002), p.3-34.
18. P.A. Monture-Angus, "Lessons in Decolonization: Aboriginal overrepresentation in Canadian Criminal Justice," in D. Long and O.P. Dickason, eds., Visions of the Heart: Canadian Aboriginal Issues (Toronto: Harcourt Canada, 2000), pp. 361-86.
19. Vicki Dalton, "Death and Dying in Prison in Australia: National Overview:1980-1998," Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 27 (1999), pp. 269-74.
20. Cunneen, "Aboriginal Deaths in Custody," p. 39.
21. Op. cit., p. 39.
22. Howard Saper (June 29, 2009). "Annual Report of the Office of the Correctional Investigation 2008-2009." Canada Office of the Correctional Investigation. Available http://www.oci-bec.gc.ca Accessed November 7, 2010.
23. Mbembe, "Necropolitics," pp. 11-40.
24. Zygmunt Bauman, Wasted Lives. Modernity and its Outcasts (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2004), p. 6.
25. Coroner's Inquest into the death of Paul Alphonse (Before Coroner S.A. Cloverdale) (October 29-Nov. 1, 2001, March 4-8, 2002) (Coroners Service of British Columbia), p. 6.
26. Renisa Mawani shows, for instance, that alcohol provisions concerning Aboriginal people were integral to maintaining spatial boundaries between white settlers and racial others. Laws were also vigorously enforced because they generated large revenues.
27. Renisa Mawani, "In Between and Out of Place: Mixed-Race Identity, Liquor, and the Law in British Columbia, 1850-1913," in Sherene Razack, ed., Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2004), p. 51.
28. Mary-Ellen Kelm, Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia 1900-1950 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998).
29. Jo-Anne Fiske and Annette Browne, "Aboriginal Citizen, Discredited Medical Subject: Paradoxical Constructions of Subjectivity in Health Care Policies," Policy Sciences 39(1) (2006), pp. 91-111.
30. Op. cit., p. 94.
31. Ministry of Interior Health, RCMP Williams Lake Detachment, and the Williams Lake Indian Band, "Media Release," April 1, 2005.
32. Inquest Paul Alphonse, p. 150, emphasis added.
33. Op. cit., p. 152.
34. Op. cit., p. 153.
35. Op. cit., p. 155.
36. Op. cit., p. 161.
37. Op. cit., p. 226.
38. Op. cit., p. 489.
39. Op. cit., p. 498.
40. Op. cit., p. 502.
41. Op. cit., p. 503.
42. Op. cit., p. 356.
43. Op. cit., pp. 382-3.
44. Op. cit., p. 443.
45. Op. cit., p. 519.
46. Cariboo-Chilcotin Justice Inquiry (Sarich, A., Commissioner) (1993). Report on the Cariboo- Chilcotin Justice Inquiry. Victoria.
47. Mbembe, "Necropolitics," p. 381.
48. Even though these inquests are in the public domain, I have chosen to discuss cases using the initials rather than the full names of the two men in a small effort to limit the circulation of the full name. In cases where I use the full names, e.g. Paul Alphonse, I was able to contact the family and obtain their support for this research and thus for the use of full names. Coroner's Inquest into the Death of CT (2008) (Coroners Service of British Columbia), February 19-21, 2008
49. Coroner's Inquest into the Death of SQ (2008) (Coroners Service of British Columbia), May 27-29, June 3, 2008.
50. Coroner's Inquest into the Death of CT (2008) (Coroners Service of British Columbia), February 19, 2008, p. 38.
51. Inquest CT, February 20, 2008, p. 50.
52. Inquest CT, February 20, 2008, p. 55.
53. Inquest CT, February 21, 2008, pp. 65-8.
54. Op. cit., February 21, 2008, pp. 73-5.
55. Coroner's Inquest into the Death of SQ (2008) (Coroners Service of British Columbia), May 27, 2008, p. 44.
56. Op. cit., May 27, 2008, p. 126.
57. Op. cit., May 27, 2008, pp. 15-24.
58. Op. cit., May 28, 2008, p. 5.
59. May 29, 2008, p. 9.
60. May 28, 2008, p. 70.
61. May 29, 2008, p. 9.
62. May 27, 2008, p. 85.
63. June 3, 2008, p. 78.
64. June 3, 2008, p. 80.
65. June 3, 2008, pp. 80-81.
66. June 3, 2008, pp. 71-2.
67. Emmanuel Levinas, "Useless Suffering," Translated by Richard Cohen, Robert Bernasconi and David Wood, eds., in The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 163.
68. Sherene Razack, "Stealing the Pain of Others: Reflections on Canadian Humanitarian Responses," The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 29(3) (2007), pp. 375-94.
69. Susan Sontag, Regarding the pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).
70. Rod Michalko, The Difference that Disability Makes (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002), p. 96.
71. Op. cit., p. 96.
72. Op. cit., p. 97.
73. Op. cit., citing Levinas, p. 99.
74. The inquiry into the death of Frank Paul (Commissioner William H. Davies, Q.C. Alone and Cold: The Davies Commission Inquiry into the Death of Frank Paul. Interim Report, February 12, 2009. Vancouver, British Columbia).
75. Radhika Mohanram, Black Body. Women, Colonialism and Space (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 22.
76. Renee L. Bergland, The National Uncanny. Indian Ghosts and American Subjects (Hanover, NH and London: University Press of New England, 2000), p. 1.
77. Op. cit., p. 22.
78. Michalko discusses the killing of 12 year old Tracy Latimer whose father Robert Latimer argued that he acted mercifully in killing his daughter because her condition of cerebral palsy brought her extreme pain. Latimer's suffering of suffering, Michalko argues, requires this act of violence; it is the only way to end what can only be suffering.
79. Michalko, The difference that disability makes, p. 103.
80. I have described this as the space of difference in law.
81. Sherene Razack, "The Space of Difference in Law: Inquests into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody," Somatechnics 1 (2011), pp. 87-123.
82. Michalko, The difference that disability makes, p. 101.
83. The inquiry into the death of Frank Paul is decorated this way (Davies, 2009). The coroner permitted healing circles and prayers in the inquest into the death of Paul Alphonse (Inquest Paul Alphonse, 2002). Notably, these banal courtesies sometimes provide Aboriginal people with small openings through which a colonial account might be pushed through.