Racism is a matter of life and death (Justice for Dougie)

"Let's heartbreak him. You shouldn't have to go through this." "Right, they didn't take only his life. They took our life too." "You know, what we've been doing is going through this same thing every day over and over and over." "That's like a nightmare." "They use these fancy words, early diagnostic closure, anchoring buyers." "It's just fancy words to cover up the truth. It's a race of violence because they'll get my mind." On behalf of us both, we would like to acknowledge the unceded sovereignty of the traditional owners on the land in which we're recording from. "And in reading the play, we foreground indigenous sovereignty. Always was. Always will be Aboriginal land." "Welcome to Read the Play Podcast with your host, me, Dr. Chelsea Wattigo." "I'm Dr. David Singh." "Together we bring you an archive of indigenous health humanities, a powerful side of scholarship, struggle and solidarity." "Across 14 episodes, we'll share all provoking conversations with brilliant minds." "Let's dive into the tools and insight that help us read the play in the colony." "Figure out our next moves and we claim the power of Blacknown." "Read the play, the play." "Welcome to episode 11 of Read the Play, Justice for Duggy." "This is a very special episode for us and for the family of Ricky Duggy Hampson, who tragically lost his life from the failure to be treated for a preventable and treatable condition double-based hospital. And we first met Uncle Rick some years ago as part of the Justice for Partnership and Health where he and his family told their story of what happened to Ricky. And I think what people aren't aware of is that an Aboriginal people die in custody. As part of the recommendation to Royal Commission to Aboriginal Lesson custody, they are to be referred to the coroner for a criminal inquest. But we are increasingly seeing numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being denied the most basic medical care. And for those families, it's a fight to get answers, to get to an inquest. And so the first part of this episode is the conversation we had with Uncle Rick about the campaign for justice for Duggy. I warn listeners this episode does contain descriptions of racial violence and premature death, but it's an important story that must be told. You remember that conversation we had? I do. Unlike so many families, they had to fight for a cronial inquest. It wasn't a given. And Uncle speaks about the toll that the campaign for justice has taken upon himself as well and the family as well as the grief they have for their son. And even coming to political activism through tragedy or not being necessarily a political activist but being forced into this. Having no other choice but to. I remember, I don't know how many years ago now, we'd heard his story and the campaign and think about how we could support the campaign and want to give credit to National Justice Project for working with the family to get for the fight for the criminal inquest. It was around this time that I had an invitation from the Medical Journal of Australia to do editorial on racism for their special issue on Indigenous health. And I was told I could write anything. And I've done a few of these before for the MJA on racism. And so as you know, David, as a co-author, we talked about systemic racism and we drew attention to what happened to Ricky. And the way in which racial stereotyping resulted in his death. And the way in which the stereotypes around indigeneity and criminality came together to rationalise the indifference to treating him, to just even conducting the procedures to determine to diagnosing in order to treat him. He was in the hospital, I think, given pain relief and sedatives and was sent on his way and tragically lost his life shortly thereafter of a condition that was treatable and suffered a most painful and horrific death. So we drew on his story to bring attention to this as part of supporting the campaign for a criminal inquest. And we drew on international studies of similar cases particularly with black people who with this same condition had been misdiagnosed as, you know, a drug induced condition. And interestingly, despite passing peer review, the editor of the time of the MJA refused to publish it. Now, this article had implicated the medical doctor. Not the individual, but the medical doctor. And the health system for the death of black fellas. It's a form of racial violence. And it was clear that the personal beliefs of the editor at the time, you know, we talked last episode about truth telling how there was, so I think the reasons we were given that they couldn't publish it was a defamation risk, but we also had a lawyer George Newhouse from the National Justice Project. So most of our work we do have to do a defamation read on because truth telling will get you in trouble. That will come for you. And so there actually was an adeformation risk that was something used to not tell the truth. And the irony here was I was asked to write on racism in the MJA for the specialist who indigenous health. And here we had this most horrific, horrific case of racial violence in the health system. So what we did, hey David, we went to me, and said, hey, can we can you publish this story? And we also told the story of the MJA's complicity in the perpetuation of racial violence and silencing the truth about what's happening in our health system. And I don't think there's enough attention given to not that it's a competition, but we hear about deaths and custody, but there are so many deaths of black fellas that experienced in the course of seeking medical care. And if I just want to acknowledge Dr. Helen Akijlick's PhD work, which looked at preventable and avoidable deaths of black fellas in the health system between 2000 and 2018. And I think she found somewhere like over 4,000 cases of which less than 300 went to coronal inquest. So Ricky's story is such an important one in the course of so many families who are still left with that answers of how our mob could be in a hospital and die of preventable conditions or be turned away from life-saving medical care. So let's go to this conversation with Uncle Rick first, hey. Good morning, Uncle Rick. Good morning, Chelsea. Good morning, David. Here we go. Good, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us as is tradition in our show. Could you introduce yourself, your mob where you come from? A bit about who you are. The woman is Rick Hampson, we're proud and un-one done, Garnie Descender. That's Mid-North Coast New South Wales at England. A member of the stolen generation, so I don't know all my mob, but I've met a few living campsy, but my grandmother and all that were born in Wildka, which is sort of on the edge of the New England area. Both seven children, one which is deceased now, that's why we're here. Thank you for joining us. I thought we'd start this year on this morning, speaking of Doug his life, I really have been influenced by the work of Dr Amy Maguire, who has reported on the violence of murdered and missing Indigenous women and the ways in which we get reduced to our wounds and people forget the beauty of Black life. So I was wondering if you could tell us about Dougie as a child, as a young man. Yeah, Dougie was our first born. We spoiled him a bit. The kids always say, "Now why is there so many photos of Dougie?" Because he was the first. And you know, like we just he was just a beautiful child. Like if you ever get to see some of the baby photos of him, you can see how smiley and bubbly and fatty was. We grew up in Sydney and we moved out west to Campbelltown. His bigger cousins used to play football and that knee was still like three, four years old and he used to play tackle with him on the front lawn. So he was toughened up pretty quick. He was very kind, gentle, little kid. When he was about eight years old, we moved to Canberra and he went to school and that there and Manie's mother had a few issues and we split up for 11 or 16 years. So at that age, Dougie, you know, was 11 coming into a young teenage age. So for them years, he sort of stood up and beat the man in the family. He took on a lot of responsibility and stuff like that and always protected his brothers and sisters and his mother. He ended up meeting a girl in Canberra. He had three girls first. They were born in Canberra. Then he decided to move to Dubbo, where his partner was from and sort of the study, the rest of his family up there. After the 16 years of our separation, we got back together and one of the granddaughters were Burns. She was playing. and Sydney and we sort of rekindled after that. - Wow. - Go back together and we're still back together now, 15 years and Dougie was so proud. We're back together and he was happy that there was someone there to look after his mum and that you know. So yeah, Dougie, all he wanted was his family, his kids, his own home sort of thing. That never eventuated their problems. So from 2014 until we passed in 21, there was sort of just on and off, which sort of got him on the streets, a bit up there in Dubbo and you know, dabbled in a bit of the drugs and that sort of stuff. But he was always happy and full of life. Like remember, Christmases that come down and he was always the one to make everybody laugh and that sort of stuff. He'd be dancing around and singing and saying, come over here and dance and sing this and sing that and he was very musical. Yeah and it just you know, a few times in and out of jail with aviators and you know, not abiding by them. Then he had his grandson in July 2020, the first grandchild. So when he got out of jail in September of 2020, they decided to give it another go, which they didn't. That lasted a thing about nine months and there was another big blow up. Then he ended up in Dubbo again, just staying with friends and that sort of stuff. And yeah, he was just on the, well, it wasn't the four-hundredth of August, 21. He was just walking along the streets of Dubbo and he felt something pop inside of his stomach, just dropped him to the ground. So that happened about five o'clock that afternoon and he was being tri-jaged at 12 minutes past five. So he must have got himself to that hospital pre-fast. So it must have been serious because he wasn't the type of person to go to hospitals, even like doctors and things like that. He thought hospitals were placed to go to die. And yeah, you know, I can tell that sort of story what happened in the hospital that had been later in the show, but that's pretty much where his life ended. They kept him for nine hours, they sent him home and he was found unresposited the next morning. - Can I ask, how did you, how was this communicated to you, the events initially when you first were told? - Well, I was in Yass where we live, my wife was here at my daughter's place in Canberra and I got a phone call from my daughter, screaming and yelling and carrying on. I didn't know what was going on. She was saying, she was just saying, "Dog's dead, dog's dead." And I was telling her to calm down, she said, "Lambory me, what do you got? What's going on?" And she told me, "Dog's dead." So I jumped in the car, rushed over here, found them two hysterical things like that. And next minute, oh, probably 20 minutes after that, we had phone calls from police in Davao, they were on scene saying that it was past. Yeah, it was just a shocking day. That was two and a half years ago and we lived that day every day. Like, it's just something for shouldn't have happened and I just can't bring myself around to believe the mentality of people to let this happen. It's just incredible. - And he, so he passed away at a friend's house. How did you find out that there was something that had happened here? - I just started making phone calls after phone calls, shooting emails after emails to the hospital, to Western Health, all that sort of stuff, trying to work out what happened while it was in the hospital and this and that. That took me a while to get some answers, matter of a couple of weeks. There was a gentleman out there at the working Western Health that actually rang me. I had a conversation with him and he wasn't aware of what was going on and he said he was gonna get a serious adverse event review. - Can you explain for our listeners what a serious adverse events review is? - It's a review team within the hospital that go over what happened and then 90 hours they had him. In that review report, they admitted to being biased towards him on presentation and yeah, it's just crazy if you read for some of the things in there is just unbelievable. They diagnosed him of cannabinoid hyper-infrasin grown, which is someone craving for cannabis and that's what they put down the pain in the belly to, but he told him when he first went in there, there's something popped, something tore inside of him. And out of 10 pain, 130 beats a minute heart rate, which is tacky cardiac. I think the word is, - And I understand the reports say that he was sedated for 19 hours. - And given painkillers and discharge without a diagnosis beyond the presumption of. - Well, like I said, at 12 minutes past 5 years being triaged, 38 minutes later, now you take the time out of that to be triaged, wait for the doctor to come and have a look whether it did or not with a student, I know. 38 minutes later, they sedated him. Now for the sedation dose for that cannabinoid I'll be able to send it out, is 0.625 milligrams, they gave him 5 milligrams. That's eight times the amount they should have gave him. That's why he was in a sedated sleep for 90 hours and couldn't advocate for himself, couldn't explain, you know, he's not doing the right thing here, that sort of thing, he had no hope. And that, in that time they were in there because the pain in the stomach and he told him he had no bowel movements for three days, they were treating him for constipation. So, how do you diagnose person with one thing but you're treating him for another for the same complaint? And his cause of death would later be identified as a result of. Two perforated ulcers, which they call, two D-O, D-O, D-O, D-O, D-O ulcers. One of them tore his stomach wall, the other one tore his bowel, he ended up with four liters of waste, side of his abdomen, and the whole time, three-poor. And this is a condition that could have been treated, had he been diagnosed when presenting to the hospital? Yep, if like he went in there, he told him something popped and tore inside of him that had dropped him to the ground. Now, we can't see through the skin. So, why didn't they give him a scan? The doctors told us if they would have gave him a scan, they would have had him in a theater that night, it could be a life today. So, all they had to do was listen to him instead of looking at a black man that's admitted to smoking cannabis and treated as drug-related when it wasn't. I met you through the art partnership for Justine Health and came across your story. And David and I and some colleagues, George Newhouse and the National Justice Project, analyzed this story to write a special editorial for the Medical Journal of Australia to talk about, or make visible, the ways in which racial stereotypes impact on the deaths, parental deaths, or black vulles in the health system. And what was interesting to us in looking at his story was the convergence of a range of stereotypes upon Indigenous peoples. So, the presumption of drug use, which renders people, does deem undeserving of care in the health system. And in society, generally, we have to recognise. But also, his last known address, or his contact person for his medical records from the prison. That's great. So, we had saw this health professionals seeing him, criminalised, drug user. And we, I guess, theorised that his indigeneity, criminality and drug use was operating in the minds of those health professionals who deemed him undeserving of a scan, which would have probably led to a diagnosis and treatment. Yeah, that influence of factors, triggering a run of particular kinds of racial stereotyping. So, Ricky, you mentioned how, like he presented himself as a black man. He had some tattoos, and he looked a bit worse for wear. And then, all manner of negative stereotypes, we suspect, began to guide the assessment. Would that be correct? Oh, without doubt. I wouldn't have doubted my mind because exactly what they did. And I've read through all the medical notes. Like, I had to put an application to get all these notes and everything. Well, class, what it was like to be reading those. Ah, let's heartbreak it. You shouldn't have to go through this. Yeah. Right, they didn't take his life, only his life. They took our life too. All we've been doing is going through this same thing every day, over and over and over. It's like, annoyed me. But without doubt, like I've read through it all, and all you see is there was reports of acute intoxication, alcohol intoxication from years and years ago, is there was the next of kin being the jail and admitted to smoking the cannabis. So they just looked at that, and it's all through the reports. But you know, you only hear it once or twice about the popping sounds. They're not listening to him. They just look at it and look at who he is, what he was, and judge him on that. And it's racial violence, 'cause they'll get my mind. Yeah, and that's why we thought. And this treatment in the health system, I heard you before when you talked about, you know, being sedated, so he couldn't advocate for himself, and having not updated his next of kin, I remember your partner, his wife, his mum, talking about that sense of helplessness of not being contacted and being able to advocate for him also, that all of these factors, doesn't mean he was, there was no one that could advocate for him. But the thing I don't understand with that, the jail bean is next to kin. He walked in off the street. He wasn't in jail friends. There was no guards with him, anything like that. Doesn't anything click in these people's minds? Well, I've been to a few emergency rooms in my life with five kids. And typically that's one of the first questions and the frustrating questions because you often have a medical emergency and they go through just confirming next to kin or your details and all that kind of stuff. So many steps along the way where you just wonder why, why all these things happened. And it speaks to the power of racial stereotypes, which people often dismiss or they label things like unconscious spies. But it is a form of violence. And you know, we tried to name that explicitly that this is life and death for black fellows in a place where you expect a level of care. Will you go for there if I help? And I know stubborn black men too. I know that they only go to the hospital when it's absolutely necessary. They're, you know, am I here, your story and how he thought about hospitals? I know that's all too familiar for a whole lot of black fellows that you only go there if you really, really need to and to be dismissed as sort of putting it on or, you know, not really having a legitimate medical condition. And time and time again, we've come across stories, Ricky, similar stories of black folk waking, waiting in reception to be seen. And you know, largely ignored both here and in Canada. We've reported on cases in Canada, similar story, the prevalence of racial stereotyping in immediate assessments and beyond. And in fact, we found the patterns of those in studies in the US and the piece that we wrote with you, Uncle, that initially was to go into the medical journal of Australia about racism and the health system. And the MJA editor at the time refused to publish this editorial because of the case and these and concocted legal reasoning for why his story shouldn't be told in the medical journal of Australia. Of course, you know, we since had it published in me engine, his story, as well as the story of this constant attempt to cover up this racial violence, or to make excuses for all to not have people know about what's happened. Now, since then, you've had a long fight in getting a coronal inquest into his death. Can you tell us about that process and why you've pursued that? Yeah, long road. Yeah. We decided to go down that avenue because we were one of the truth. We need to know what's going on. We're lying on what the hospital say and, you know, they look after each other and they cover each other's backs. So we need to get sort of some sort of truth, hopefully. So we started, I think it was four months after his passing, we had a protest in front of the hospital in Dubbo. We met with big knobs of the Western health out there before the protest started. They ended up walking out on that meeting because they, there was just ridiculous. So it was too many failures at night and we couldn't see there and talk to them anymore. So we went out, we'd done the protest. We've got a bit of media coverage and that and that started the ball rolling. The hard work of the National Justice Project, they helped us a lot and they still are. There are legal counsel in the inquest. We went from there, we've done media conferences from State Parliament in Sydney. We've met a few politicians. We've been doing rallies in Canberra, Sydney. We've had media stories on the point in our TV news. That sort of stuff. We're just getting it out there and fighting for the scene. I think it was about just over 12 months into the fight. They granted the inquest, but they didn't give us a date until July last year. And because you had the hospital investigation, which is not made public, I understand, but there was in that some concession of inadequate treatment or unconscious bias. Or there was something that was indicative in the internal investigation that. Yeah. I'm sick of that word. I'm treating carefully here. But yeah, no, I actually looked it up yesterday to find out what I'm actually meant. And it had a few meanings, but right down the bottom says racial discrimination. But yeah, they use these fancy words. Early diagnostic closure, anchoring bias. It's just fancy words to cover up the truth. Yeah, let's move found in this analysis of this language that massed racial violence and this kind of medical rationalizing of a preventable, avoidable death that had a cure that there were steps that could have been taken to diagnose and treat. And sadly, I think a lot of people don't realize, you know, there is. And rightly so, attention given to death in custody or our mob. And because of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal, Zest in custody, any Aboriginal, Torres Strait, on the death in custody automatically is referred to for a coronal inquest. But we are seeing and we've seen for some time now. I mean, there's a reason why black fellas think of hospitals as places to die because the health system, like policing, is the state at work. And there are black fellas dying at the hands of doctors and medical staff, just like there are black fellas dying at the hands of cops. And oftentimes, we've seen particularly in more recent years, the confluence of both of the refused to provide medical care in the course of being in custody or in the course of their encounter. So the health system and the policing are working in tandem to produce these preventable and avoidable deaths of mob. But sadly, deaths of black fellas in the health system aren't automatically referred for a coronal inquest. And Helena Kylik, who is one of our PhD students, has been looking at death, parental deaths of black fellas in the health system post 2000. And I think she found somewhere in excess of 4000 preventable and avoidable deaths that were referred to the coroner, with only about 300 going to inquest. Uncle Rick, you talked earlier about putting your life on hold in the lead up, in the fight for justice for your son. Can I ask what this has been like for you and the family and also a week out from this inquest, how do you prepare for something like this? I don't think you can prepare. This is something that's sneaking up on us, something we want and we've always wanted. But as it gets closer, you get more nervous, more anxious to find out, is the truth going to come out or are they going to hide what is we tied on? I don't know if you've ever seen that movie Groundhog Day, the same day just retreated. So that's what it's like. You wake up in the morning and you don't think of it in that first split second until you get up and you go, "Oh, you go again." It's that same day over and over again, you're either doing phone calls, some sort of interviews or you're doing emails about what's going on and fighting for this inquest, preparing for the inquest and having things over and over and over and all that sort of stuff. It's just taken our lives and I've seen a psychologist for the last two years. It's good to talk to somebody but it doesn't change anything. You're still that person. It's two and a half years and it's like it's happened yesterday. It just takes over your life, I don't know how to explain it, but it's like it's not real, but you know it is. It's crazy. Like I said earlier on, they didn't just take his life, but it took the hours as well. And even when the inquest is over and it's all that's over, that part of it's never going to change. When I hear you speak of change, I'm reminded of all of the families who have lost loved ones at the hands of the state in different circumstances who come to these processes and and remain committed to these fights because of the desire to at least change it for someone else so that they never go through this again. What change do you seek, your family seek in this process for others? We want changes as in a safe place or Black Fathers will go and they need medical help. With the new army Williams inquest in 2019, there was recommendations made there that should have been in place. And Dougie wouldn't have been in this position, but they were never put in place. And you had the Minister for Health back then, I think Brad Hazard, I believe. He sat down with new army's mother Sharon and told her that this will never happen in New South Wales ever again to another Black Fathers. And none of them recommendations will put in place. And for like I said, if they were Dougie, be it a day, but you know, these recommendations are quite a lot to give out. It's just advice. But they don't have that on them. They don't have to do anything if they don't want it. And this is the thing I think people people realize that and why mobile frustrated with these processes and inquiries and investigations is because despite including people's families through this pain and you know coming up with recommendations, they are not legally enforceable. And what we've seen with nearly every investigation and inquiry into indigenous deaths anywhere and everywhere is that the recommendations don't get implemented. And that's then the next fight is to actually do what they have themselves recommended. Should be happening. And I think the general community doesn't realise that if these recommendations are put in place, everyone would have a better experience of care. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, it's not hard. They take a nose to take care of people, to save lives, and this sort of stuff. Why judge anybody? Any race, any colour? Just don't get it. But we've been doing all this for 236 years. Changes have got to come, and that's one of our fights. We fight for justice. We want someone held accountable for what they did. And we want changes within the health system. More ALOs, 24/7 they can do shifts. More training as into the past and what we've already dealt with. And more truth telling us what this topic needs. The thing I think we've learnt over the years of dealing with race and finding, trying to find justice in legal systems that are as violent as the health systems in which we're seeking justice for, you know, in. We've had to really rethink on even for ourselves, in some of the cases that we work on, is what justice is for us. Because oftentimes we've been led to believe justice is found in the legal system with a verdict, with the result. But for us, what sustains us in all of our work is redefining what justice is. And there are sometimes moments of justice in processes, not always in the outcome. How do you and your family think about justice? And have there been moments where you felt a sense of justice in the midst of the fight that you've been forced to take up? Now, cars I really have, to be honest. Probably the only time we thought, in that way, would be when we were told we were getting the inquest. But I think justice for Black fellas is, you know, we just want to be. We want to be treated like everyone else. I mean, we're still living in a colony. But realistically, we're never going to get all this land back. So we've got to live this life. But we need to be recognised as a sovereign people of this land. We need to be recognised as a normal human being, not treated like an animal when we go to places like hospitals and things like that. The other question I had for you is when we're talking about change, and thinking about your life before you lost Ricky, to now, how do you think it's changed you politically as a Black fella, this experience? I'd never ever thought I'd be going to rallies and speaking and, you know, scream and carry on in the way just to get things done. Politically, I just. I've said it last year, and I've said it again this year, that even when all this is over, I'm going to continue on with the rallies and talking until things, you know, not get changed in this country. I never thought I'd ever have to be doing this sort of stuff, I didn't have to want to do this stuff. But I will continue it on, even when the encloser is over and it's all settled. The fight will continue. I've got some good contacts now within that Black Thrive movement. So yeah. And I think a lot of settlers don't realise, you know, there's this framing of Black fellas and political activism as I think Paris referred to us as serial protesters. You know, there's demonising of the Black activists, so to speak. But when you're young with mob who are in the fight, it's come from a place. It's come from a place of hurt or of injustice, but it's fueled by love for our people. That's right. We're forced into doing it because they love for our people. We don't just choose to do it for some to do. We don't have an other answer, so that's all we've got to do to try it somewhere. And you know, you've had to use all the formal processes, you know, and follow the rules and the procedures and you know, jump through all the hoops and the, you know, freedom information requests, the internal reviews, the medical editorial, all of these things. And even when you do and when you show evidence, their own evidence of their violence, there is still this concerted effort to silence or to do nothing. Yeah, you sort of limited to what you can say. That sort of thing because for one, the inquest hasn't happened yet and you don't want to jeopardise anything. And it's hard. When you get out there and you try to speak about Doug story and about all Black fellas and what's going on, you just got to be very careful of the words you choose and you know, like they've got all these fancy words. Sometimes you've got to use them and you can't use the words you really want to use. Which it's hard. Like you've got this much anger inside you. You know, Doug was 36. He didn't deserve to die. And we just got to keep fighting and you just got to bite your tongue sometimes. Until this is over, once it's all over, they're going to hear a bit more. Trust me. I'm a nut. Yeah, I mean, this thing to Uncle, I was reminded of so many families that I've sat with, worked with, who were grieving. Whilst also, as you said Chelsea, having political demands made of them in this moment in order to get to the truth of their loved ones death and suddenly finding themselves pitched into family campaigns. And often when you see a grieving family whose loved one has died in custody or care and they'll stand on a platform wearing a t-shirt with their loved one. And I remember one family member saying, how long do we have to wear these t-shirts? And sister Tony Brady. That was, yeah. And listening to Uncle, I was taken right back to that evening. But he was so stormed, his family were amazing. To work with him was an honour. And that piece is one that I'm very proud of. And I should say, because around this time there had been like an internal review by the hospital. And I think they came up with these terms of what's the cognitive bias in the Mianjian piece, we write about the language that's used to avoid naming systemic racism and racial violence. And these medical terms that have been created to diagnose racial violence by not naming it as racial violence. And you know, fortunately the family were successful in getting an inquest into his death. And what was interesting was there was also a reproduction of that same narrative. I think they come up with systemic failings, struggled to name systemic racism as we've seen more recently in the Common J Walker case. But I want to, before we move on to Dr Barry Wille Valley, is to read the words of Uncle Rick outside the inquest findings. He says, "The coroner has made a finding that my son's death was preventable. He didn't have to die. If double bass hospital had just done their job, he would be here with us today. A lot of black fellas don't normally go to the hospital because of the track record of the health system in this country. Just look at what happened to our beloved son. He was terrified of hospitals, but he still went to double bass hospital that day because he knew something was seriously wrong. And what did he get in return? He's worst fears became a reality. Dougie walked out of that hospital with a death sentence because he was ignored and treated so poorly by the very people that it should have saved his life. He died alone and without his family. And he died even though he'd everything that a patient should have done. It's hard to make any kind of comment after such a definitive statement from one call there, preventable death systemic failings. The doctor concerned was referred to the Health Care Commission. I think and once again recommendations to improve the cultural safety of patients, but singly lacking from the determination was a reference to racism. But the family drew some satisfaction from the finding, but it will never bring their son back. I think the other thing that has, I think, strikes me learning from uncle and the family more widely. And those that we've worked with over the years is it doesn't stop at the Inquest findings. We know that even if you get an Inquest finding that validates what we know and even if it comes up with recommendations for change, those recommendations aren't enforceable in any way. And what we see with these families who have in the midst of the grief had to campaign organised, mobilised, repeat the retelling of the trauma and the tragedy, the even when they get to these moments, this is a lifelong work for families who have lost loved ones in this way. And I know the family still turn up and fight for others, amplify their voices and through such tragedy is a building of a community of people that are committed to changing this world for the betterment of others. And you know, for all of those who have well-paid positions working in a health that demonise the radicals, this is why we do this work and this is why we take this side. I want to shift to if we can in closing out this episode is to one of my favourite Indigenous doctors, Dr. Barrett LaValle, I met him years ago and I was at a conference where back at the time we couldn't name racism but some of us were and I featured alongside of him and he just had this melcomax kind of presence like he's big fella, he had them glasses and it's just so staunch and when I spoke we're just connected because we were same kind people working in the health system and telling the truth about the violence of the health system. He's just one of the most intelligent men, most caring people that I've encountered, not a lot of our Indigenous medical doctors are made like him here sadly in terms of his very fierce political stance that he makes and that has come at these same moments that we've just spoken about of attending to the racial violence and so he will hear from Dr. LaValle, he makes reference to the most horrific case in Winnipeg of Brian Sinclair and he was one of the authors that was tasked to interrogate how Brian was only seen in stereotypes. He was an Indigenous man who sat in an emergency room waiting area. I can't recall how it was for a very sustained period of time and he died in an emergency room waiting area and was neglected the whole time and he speaks about the way in which stereotypes work the same way it worked in Dougie's death of how when a first nation person appears in health settings how they're seen through stereotypes of violent men, neglectful mothers, alcoholics, drug addicts and therefore denied care and what's interesting here is if we take those stereotypes to be true from a clinical perspective that should increase the quality of medical care because the supposed complexities surrounding those issues but what we're seeing is we have health professionals, doctors, nurses, the lot who are deeming certain people deserving of certain levels of care based on their own beliefs about who was human and who was not human and then needs to be accountability for that. He is Dr. Barry LaValley. Barry LaValley, Dijonika, St. Laurent Dungie, Makwa Dundam. In my life there are only two things to pass to follow. Number one was to die with my relatives on Skid Row and then the other one was to become a doctor. That wasn't done because my parents were professors or anything like that. My parents were indentured slaves to the whites in central Manitoba and they didn't finish the 12th. They read but they had gone through French, they residential schools and were squished in their identity and that's the legacy of colonization, a small part of what colonization has done, continues to do and will do to the identity of First Nations people here. Now when I speak for the next few minutes I'm going to only speak and refer to First Nations people. I'm the CEO for an organization called Kiwaitinokininu Mino-Yawin. Cree is not my first language but should I translate it into English it means Nordium People's Wellness and I was selected for this position by the elders in my community. I'm a physician by training and I have a master's degree and I'm a net expert in adult pedagogy. Androgyology actually and that's what I use to torture students wanting to become physicians here in Manitoba for about through the amount of 4000 students. And we developed an anti-racism and indigenous specific anti-racism curriculum year for which we fought and that included self-reflective exercises for white students to understand the deep ingrained mechanisms by which they sustain racism and oppression and genocide through the actions of what was to be or should have been actions to deliver life to sustain life and to reduce suffering and to promote healing. So my area of expertise if it's anything is really to understand how colonial health systems are part of the system to kill first nations or more likely to murder. I distinguish killing from murder killing I could kill a frog I could kill a fly and some people might think that they can actually kill Indians because we're not human. But I say murder. There's some faces that we saw here in Winnipeg. Brian Stinclair and I was one of the lead authors in reviewing the inquiry that actually was tasked to ensure that Brian was only seen in stereotypes. Drunken Indian or violent mental health inability to care for self. The same kinds of things I would imagine at first nations people are imparted when they enter a health care system. We studied stereotypes here in BC actually and we at the conclusion of that particular PhD what we said was that any person who phenotypically looks brown and looks like an Indian or first nations could only enter any health care system in stereotype. Meaning that if you're a man, you're evil if you're a woman, you're a bad mother, if your kids have snoughter nose, you're a bad mother, you don't care about yourselves, you're an alcoholic, a druggy, etc, etc, etc. What we realize is that stereotyping plus power kills. It reduces the ability of any first nations person entering any health care system in Canada here to actually fulfill their rights to health as the first people on these lands. There's only a few things I want to share with you. I wish I was there with you, but I developed some medical conditions that would have been hard for me to travel the 17 hours over, but I'd love to be there with you. I am a refugee. I'm not Canadian. I'm anishnaabe. I'm a refugee who has an MD and a master's degree and almost finished a PhD. The colonist can remove my MD, my masters, and I'll be no different than many of my relatives who are on welfare and suffer. The positionality of who we are as indigenous people is so close to not being real and not and actually dying. We realize through our analysis that white privilege or now we say settler privilege because there's lots of brown people coming to our stolen lands who actually impart the same kinds of colonial violence on indigenous people. So now I say settler privilege is like a coin. The privilege allows certain things, but on the other side of the coin is the dying of first nations people. Shereen Rosak out of UCLA believes that the settler is compelled to go to the grave of the dead Indian and they kick out, but they can't move away. Their compulsion to actually go to the grave of the dead Indian actually reflects a deeper knowing by the colonists or the settlers that something is really wrong in Australia. Something is really wrong in New Zealand. Something is wrong and Hawaii, mainland USA, and Canada. So yet what ends up happening is that our analysis here in Manitoba because we have a large file that addresses first nations specific racism, not by Pock. I never talk about that. I'll tell you why. So first nation specific racism murders first nations people in healthcare systems. And yet we can never, we don't have evidence in the judicial systems that come from England to be able to show that narrative and prove that story. And that's very, very difficult. The way forward is about sovereignty. The way forward is for us to create our own hospitals, our own universities, our own schools, and to protect our own people. For about 30 years now I work to try and change the system. I'm tired because it doesn't change. Settlers are like cyborgs. You can actually do a class and do all kinds of really cool pedagogic or adrogogic implementations. And yet when they go home and they sit with their racist uncle on the Sunday, everything is reinstalled and it's lost. So unless we actually change the structures of indifference in Canada and other places, this will continue. So sovereignty, we believe, is the most powerful indicator of good health for first-day should people. Sovernting, you gotta remember that. So you know, during the Syrian crisis, there was a person who was at the border of North Dakota, which is USA and Manitoba. And I observed, and I spoke about this at a large conference at U.U. That when the settler or the refugee put their foot on Manitoba stolen lands, they got a doctor, they got a house. When they put their other foot on our stolen lands, then they got a job, their kids were safe, and they had a future. There is no space in any first-day community in Canada that has those five things. Yet if you're a refugee from afar, you get that. This Canadian government, not just Trudeau, it's every government, okay? So I suggested to a large conference that will take all indigenous people across Canada, move them to Vancouver and then to Halifax. They'll get 2,000, 3,000 votes, put them on votes, take them to the international waters, turn around and say to the Canadian government, "Hey, we're refugees." So Trudeau is the same way. And people, the white people and the crowds started getting up and walking away, but the first station's people clapped. Because I am a refugee, okay? In like Palestine, where Canada, Australia, America, England provided monies to the Zionists in Israel to kill brown little kids and to conceal it that way. This is ongoing. And yes, in Manitoba, the University of Manitoba, we have a large argument going to compare the killing of Palestinians to the racism experienced by indigenous people, first nations people that results in the fantasy of the colonial system, that is to kill or to murder. That's really important. And just really, I want you to understand that we are not by-pop, not in where I'm at. The difference between brown people, black people and other people who are actually settlers to these land is that the reason we are targeted as first nations people is because we are the land. The land is us. And as long as we exist, we are a reminder to the sector system that they are wrong, that this is stolen land. [Music] One of my favourite parts of Dr. Lavelle's talk at the National Symposium, because I remembered this, but I can remember who said it, but it was him. He said, "Settlers are like cyborgs. You can do all sorts of incredible things in class, build amazing pedagogies, but then they go home to their racist uncle and it's all reprogrammed." Literally, though, because those are just who worked in an education space for a long time. 25 years of work and then rural Queensland, delivering the two-day compulsory cultural awareness training, and people have their come to the right moment and do this and then back to work on Monday and its business as usual. And even at first year uni students, we have the same intake each. We did not know. We've become enlightened. Even lots of black voters who work under white managers who are new to the space and are so generous because we want them to do well, because it's for our people. And so we invest so much labor in helping them to get it. And we get excited when they start to get it. And then they just defaults. Right. And you're like, "But didn't they learn anything?" And so I've only got the expression that it was just so. Because I mean, while we're working on legal cases and the expert reports and the public submissions and policy change, we do invest in education because of the preventative possibilities. Like if we do that work, we feel like if we help people to understand it better, they're not going to perpetuate harm. So we're not going to be working with families fighting for justice and going through such grief and trauma. Absolutely. I mean, we get so excited when we're delivering that tutorial and somebody gets it in that moment. But you know that outside in the real world, as our university would have it, there is a default mode. And as Barry points out, it's a default program that they return to each and every time. And what I love about Dr. LaValle is in some of the closing words there in and what he's delivered at the symposium is he said, "Sovereignty we believe is the most powerful indicator of good health for First Nations people's sovereignty." Not equity. Not equity. And he said, "The reason that we are targeted at First Nations people is because we are the land. We are a daily reminder to the settlers that their sovereignty is illegitimate." Now look, our next episode, David. We again, dealing with the reality, the brutality of racial violence, the hands of Queensland Police Service, and we're in conversation with one of our most respected colleagues and friends, Dr. Rayleigh Nixon, to tell her story. It'll remind us the listeners, again, this next episode deals with fairly heavy content material and descriptions of racial violence just as I'm wanting to you. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Read the Play. Make sure to subscribe, leave a review and share your thoughts. Until next time, keep reading the play. And never forget who saw your own. Read the play. The play.