Prayers for Peacemakers, 10 January 2017 Indigenous Peoples Solidarity
Pray for the family and other loved ones of Windy Sinclair,
a 29-year-old Anishinaabe woman from Winnipeg who froze to death in the bitter
cold around Christmas.
Pray that the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority will be
accountable to the circumstances that led to this vulnerable woman slipping out
of the emergency room into the -28 C snowy night before being discharged.
Winnipeg has the highest population of urban Indigenous
people in Canada, and IPS often hears stories from indigenous partners about
receiving inadequate care in the hospitals of this city. Sinclair’s mother is
still looking for answers to her questions as to how her daughter, suffering
the effects of a drug addiction, could slip out of the emergency room and stay
missing for three days without anyone informing the family or the police.
As she said to the Winnipeg
Free Press, “I feel they failed her because she was a native
woman. They failed me as a mother because they didn’t notify me when she left
on her own. When I called, they tell me she’s treated and discharged. It takes
calling back for them to tell me the truth,” she said. “Why? Because
it’s just another native woman. Just another native woman that passed away.
Just another native woman who goes missing.”
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| Windy Sinclair sits with her four children, photo supplied by her family to the media. |
