WHO WAS KINEW JAMES?
A look at the woman who died in a prison cell
When Kinew James’ family asked that her legal name, Ke She Ba Nudin Nuke Kinew James, be used when the jury was brought into the coroner’s inquest hearing room, the request was denied.
Instead, the shortened name she commonly used remained in official use at the inquest into James’ January 2013 death at the Regional Psychiatric Centre (RPC), which ended Thursday. James died from a cardiac arrest resulting from poorly managed diabetes.
“Kinew is more like a nickname. To say her Anishinaabe name (which translates to Eagle in the Whirlwind) gives power to her name,” her sister, Cheryl James said.
“It’s an invocation. The wind is powerful. Despite all the stuff going on in her life with her mental health, she was above it,” Cheryl said.
Coroner Timothy Hawryluk’s decision reminded James’ mother, Grace Campbell, of the reaction of vital statistics staff who resisted registering her daughter’s birth under that name, saying it wasn’t a real name. At the time, James’ father John James took the phone and convinced the bureaucrat the Anishinaabe name was as legitimate as any other.
Recommendations from the inquest jury call for greater understanding of and respect for the distinctive needs of the over-represented indigenous populations within Canadian prisons.
A four-part recommendation called for the Correctional Service of Canada to work toward reconciliation. It recommended promoting the equal value of traditional healing and by actively recruiting indigenous employees.
The jury urged the RPC to have staff training in aboriginal social history.
The recommendations also included numerous directives for health-care workers simply to do their jobs, such as monitoring vital signs, filling out charts promptly, learning to recognize life-threatening symptoms, proving they know how to manage diabetes, knowing how prescribed drugs interact, recognizing medical emergencies and knowing how to address them.
“Staff must be reminded of their legal and professional obligations to respond to cell calls in a timely and appropriate manner,” one of the recommendations states.
Several recommendations call for reliable methods of evaluating how and when work is done.
Cheryl James remembers her youngest sister as “a funny kid. Very witty. She liked to laugh and play. She was adventurous,” she said.
John James taught his youngest daughter to count in Anishinaabe and took the family to powwows, where they camped and cooked bannock over a fire, Cheryl recalled. He operated a canteen at powwows and took the family to ceremonies.
He kept a copy of a Manitoba aboriginal justice report and a copy of the Indian Act on top of the fridge and encouraged his children to read them, she said.
As a teen, Kinew was active in the Native Youth Movement, participating in a four-day walk to Sioux Valley Dakota Nation to protest the destruction of the planet and the denial of the Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq people’s treaty fishing rights. She was also once named the Roseau River Pow Wow Princess.
But James was also a troubled youth, who ran away from home, was initiated into a gang and was pregnant when, at 15, she was convicted of manslaughter, Cheryl said.
To say her Anishinaabe name (which translates to Eagle in the Whirlwind) gives power to her name.