Foreclosing Accountability: The Limited Scope of the Seven Youth Inquest in Thunder Bay, Ontario

• Main Author: Hay, Travis Andrew
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian Review of Social Policy / Revue canadienne de politique sociale 2019
• Subjects: Provincial inquests; settler colonialism; federal Indian policy; First Nations education; Indigenous studies; treaty history; Thunder Bay; Social Policy; Indigenous Issues; Indian; First Nations; Premières Nations
• Online Access: https://crsp.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/crsp/article/view/40328

Between 2000 and 2011 seven students from First Nation communities across northern Ontario lost their lives while attending high school in Thunder Bay. These losses of Indigenous life became the subject of a joint provincial inquest that concluded in the summer of 2016. In this article the author offers a critical examination of the scope of this inquest as well as a broader chronological review of its proceedings. The focus is on the ways in which the presiding coroner shaped the scope of the inquest to include things like the alcohol consumption of the students and to exclude things like the quality of police investigations. The issue of First Nation Jury Representation and its role in delaying the inquest for several years is also contextualized. Ultimately, it is argued that the Seven Youth Inquest conforms closely to what Sherene Razack (2011; 2015) has written about the colonial function of inquests into the deaths of Indigenous peoples: mainly that such proceedings stage decontextualized narratives of First Nation dysfunction that are hostile to structural analysis and unlikely to animate opportunities for institutional accountability. Finally, it is argued that non-Indigenous coroners – who are trained in forensic pathology but lack training in federal Indian policy, treaty rights, and Indigenous histories – are unqualified to preside over provincial inquests into the deaths of First Nation people. In fact, this training (or lack thereof) may facilitate setting woefully limited scopes and therefore reproducing victim-blaming of First Nation youth in Canadian courtrooms.RésuméEntre 2000 et 2011, sept étudiants Autochtones ont trouvé la mort alors qu’ils poursuivaient des études secondaires à Thunder Bay. Ces derniers venaient de plusieurs communautés des Premières Nations à travers l’Ontario. La mort de ces jeunes Autochtones a été le sujet d’une enquête du coroner de la province de l’Ontario qui a été conclue à l’été 2016. Les auteurs de cet article offrent une explication critique de la portée de ...