CBC – Brian Sinclair was killed by racism on Sept. 21, 2008. He was ignored for 34 hours, despite his need for urgent medical care, because medical professionals made negative assumptions about him based solely on his appearance. Anti-Indigenous bias is an endemic problem in Canadian health care:

• The hospital authority denied that stereotyping had anything to do with Mr. Sinclair’s death.
• The government of Manitoba refused to hold a public inquiry.
• The inquest into Mr. Sinclair’s death sidelined issues of race and social marginalization.
• Regulatory bodies have been slow to implement any changes, if at all, and
• no one has been held accountable for professional misconduct or criminal neglect.

The findings of the Manitoba Ombudsman rely on the government’s health and justice departments “appraising their own progress.”

http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/5782400/Brian-Sinclair-Final-Report-En.pdf.

The Brian Sinclair Working group was formed to examine the role of racism in the death of Brian Sinclair and in the inquest that followed, in order to highlight ongoing structural and systemic anti-Indigenous racism in our contemporary health and legal systems. The Sinclair family and the Sinclair Working Group have called for a public inquiry to explore the underlying systemic racism in the delivery of Health services to Indigenous populations. The Working Group aims to release a final report in 2018. The interim report “Ignored to Death” was issued Sept. 2017