Airport under fire over ‘desecration’
Aboriginal elder forced to open medicine pouch
Geri Musqua-leblanc, a First Nations elder who lives in Halifax, was not even planning to bring her traditional herbal medicine pouch on her holiday to the Dominican Republic.
It would have been much better to leave it at home, as it turned out, because an airport security officer’s “desecration” of the pouch during pre-boarding security screening brought Musqua-leblanc to near tears, and confirmed her sense that Indigenous spirituality is broadly ignored and rejected in civil society, especially airport security.
When she objected to opening the pouch and suggested putting it through the X-ray instead, a Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) supervisor even threatened to remove her from the airport unless she allowed the pouch to be opened, inspected, and as Musqua-leblanc sees it, defiled and ruined.
The episode at the Halifax airport last month also revealed some of the perils of religious accommodation at security check-in, where for example Sikh kirpan daggers are allowed on domestic flights if their blades are shorter than 6 centimetres, and head coverings must go through the X-ray, all of which must be managed in a climate of “common sense and courtesy,” as CATSA policy puts it.
Musqua-leblanc thinks the problem is wider than just her own experience, and hopes that it can be improved, but there was confusion Monday over who was supposed to get in touch with whom. Musqua-leblanc has not filed a formal complaint, but was expecting CATSA to contact her for details. CATSA was similarly waiting for her to contact them.
“We take the screening of sacred items seriously and fully appreciate the sensitivities involved,” said spokeswoman Suzanne Perseo in a statement.
“We have now investigated this incident, including
COLONIALISM PLAYS A HUGE ROLE IN HOW WE TRAVEL.
viewing CCTV footage, and found that screening protocol was followed and the sacred medicine pouch was never touched by a screening officer.”
The pouch, worn on a strap around her neck, included tobacco for gratitude, sweetgrass for strength, sage for knowledge, especially women’s knowledge, and cedar for protection. The herbs were all mixed together, in total about enough to fill a pipe bowl, so no more than a few grams.
“All these medicines give us protection, spiritually and emotionally,” Musqua-leblanc said. “They give me a sense of protection.”
Musqua-leblanc is a survivor of the St. Philip’s Indian Residential School at the Keeseekoose First Nation in eastern Saskatchewan. Today, retired from the public service, she is a co-ordinator of the Elders in Residence program at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Her experience is that her spiritual practices and belief are not accepted by the rest of society, and often cause unexpected problems at airports.
“So rather than arguing with them, I just don’t bring them,” she said. “Colonialism plays a huge role in how we travel.”
She anticipated a security pat-down, as her artificial knee and hip often sets off the metal detector, but when a security officer asked what was around her neck, she realized she had accidentally brought the pouch, and immediately feared a conflict.
She told him what it was, and asked that he not touch it. She went through the metal detector again, and it beeped again.
“Don’t touch the pouch,” she said again, and he agreed, but seemed unsure how to proceed to clear her for flying. A supervisor came over, seeming confrontational and “not in a pleasant mood,” Musqua-leblanc said.
The supervisor said she needed to see the herbs. “I can’t open them,” Musqua-leblanc said.
“If you don’t want to open them, I can escort you to the door,” the supervisor said.
In the end, Musqua-leblanc opened her pouch, and said the officer pulled her hand toward her to get a better look.
“It’s extremely upsetting,” she said. She added that her partner, Bill Strum, cleared security right behind her with a similar pouch that he was not required to open.
While on holiday, Musqua-leblanc fell ill, and has recovered. She does not attribute the illness to the airport episode, but the coincidence is especially painful.
“I should have had all those to ward off negative energies. And they should have been clean and pure. But they were not. They were desecrated,” she said.
Rather than dispose of them in the garbage, she said she made an offering of them to the creator by scattering them into the sea.