Native Mother Arrested in Bella Coola After Her Baby Died
corporate news report
Friday, February 28, 2003
Native leaders are furious at the "insensitivity" of police who arrested a young mom after her seven-week-old baby died in Bella Coola Hospital.
"My concern is that it appears this aboriginal family is being persecuted by law-enforcement officials as a result of their political in-volvement in Sun Peaks and other protests, and that their spiritual beliefs that oppose autopsy have been violated," said an angry Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs.
"This is a tragedy and a highly personal family matter, but because the police have persecuted the grieving family instead of respecting their religious beliefs, we are very concerned and we are offering them our support."
Police arrested and charged two women, one aged 22 and the other a teen believed to be the baby's mother, with obstruction of justice after the baby's body was removed from the hospital last Saturday. The 22-year-old is also charged with intimidation.
Members of the young mother's prominent family -- including a lawyer who has spoken on native rights at the United Nations -- went to Bella Coola last Saturday to object to an autopsy. Police stopped the family near Anahim Lake and arrested a 21-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman on unrelated charges.
The family cannot be named to protect the identity of the juvenile.
Bella Coola former chief Archie Pootlass said he took the young mother, her baby and her female friend to Bella Coola Hospital about 7 p.m. last Friday.
The young mother was intensely worried about her tiny baby, said Pootlass, especially since she'd already taken him to the hospital clinic earlier that day.
"She said they told her the baby had a cold and to go home," said Pootlass, a hereditary Nuxalk chief.
Once in hospital, the baby was immediately placed on life support and arrangements made for a medical team from B.C. Children's Hospital to fly to Bella Coola because the baby was too ill to travel. The baby's mother and three others maintained a vigil at the hospital all night. The baby died about 9 a.m. Saturday.
The grief-stricken relatives took the body from the hospital before the coroner could examine it. The baby's body was later recovered and an autopsy was to be done, said RCMP Sgt. Grant Learned.
"What I am told by our legal department is that the Coroner's Act supersedes other legal or religious requirements," said Learned.
"With all due sensitivity and respect for cultural and spiritual beliefs, the coroner still has to establish the cause of death and that is the purpose of the autopsy."
Several recent coroner's juries have recommended that police and coroners respect as much as possible the wishes of grieving families, such as natives and Muslims, whose religious beliefs forbid autopsies.
Pootlass said the hospital staff "made some insulting and . . . racist insinuations about the mother.
"There is a pattern of disrespect toward the local First Nations community from some of the hospital staff that we will be making public, but we do not want to interfere with this family's attempt to get justice."
The Bella Coola Hospital is run under contract to the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority by the United Church of Canada.
Viviana Zanocco, of the Coastal Health Authority, would not release details of the baby's first visit to hospital and his subsequent death but insisted: "We did everything by the book."