It’s hard to decide which aspect of 48-year-old Mina Iquasiak Aculiak’s recent encounters with the state is the most reprehensible.
There’s the fact Ms. Aculiak, who was detained by Montreal police on July 27 after allegedly showing up intoxicated at the rehabilitation centre where she is staying, was cut loose from a jail nine kilometres away shortly after midnight with a catheter still dangling from her arm.
Perhaps it’s that she went missing for six days before anyone could be troubled to notify the public that a severely injured, mentally ill Inuit woman who speaks no French and only a few words of English was wandering around an unfamiliar city 1,200 kilometres from her home.
Then there’s the incident that brought her south in the first place: In April, police in the Nunavik hamlet of Umiujaq responded to a complaint and, in circumstances that remain murky, slammed into Ms. Aculiak with a police truck.
The law-enforcement services concerned have a great deal to answer for. But there’s plenty of blame to go around.
Mina Iquasiak Aculiak.THE CANADIAN PRESS
Quebec’s civilian police oversight bureau initially declined to investigate the April incident on the grounds that Ms. Aculiak had “only” suffered a broken arm (that’s a scandal in itself). Except she also had fractured vertebrae, a lacerated lung and kidney, broken ribs and a punctured lung. Only after the true extent of her injuries was revealed by the media did the watchdog deign to open a file.
Pointed questions can also be asked of the public rehabilitation facility she was sent to recuperate at, and how Ms. Aculiak, who had expressed suicidal thoughts, was able to turn a smoke break into an hours-long drinking session. And did no one notice when she didn’t return from police detention the next day?
More than anything, the heartbreaking travails of Ms. Aculiak betray the system’s cold indifference to Indigenous people, particularly those in psychological distress. She is the latest to drop through a series of cracks no one seems overly bothered to fill.
In an age that’s ostensibly about reconciliation, this is a story of dispiriting, unacceptable failure. Our failure.