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Guard slashed at Kent prison goes public Attack prompts call for safety measures Robert Freeman The Progress
Patricia Kelly, whose native name is Kwitsel Tatel, sings to the beat of drums in the background as she enters Chilliwack Law Courts Thursday morning. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Native fishing case draws court demonstration Robert Freeman The Progress A Sto:lo woman’s lone court fight against her “criminalization” for possessing fish that she says is an aboriginal right nearly came to blows last week. Patricia Kelly was arrested and jailed for drumming and singing her way into the Chilliwack courthouse Wednesday, where she hoped to present expert testimony on her fishing rights under the Canadian constitution. But that testimony, heard in court Thursday from a Lethbridge University professor, first had to meet judicial standards to be
accepted as the opinion of an expert, rather than an advocate, a process that took up a full morning of the one day of scheduled court time left to Kelly to make her case. Sto:lo Nation president Joe Hall said outside the courtroom that the need to follow rigid court rules of procedure is a flaw in the system that aboriginal people can’t overcome — without the political will of the federal government. “It’s the government, at the end of the day, that has the ability to change the acts that create the laws that the courts are stuck with,” he said. But the courts aren’t set up to
hear these kinds of social issues, he said. So when Kelly was charged under the Fisheries Act in 2004, and then continued to fight her conviction, she was treated like a criminal rather than an aboriginal person simply exercising her constitutional rights, he said. And as she tried to practice her aboriginal culture by drumming and singing as she walked into the courthouse Wednesday, he added, “she gets the same treatment as if she were the murderer down in Colorado, for heaven’s sake.” “The government has to resolve these issues through legislation and policy,” he said, “rather than
just automatically turning them into crimes and have the courts deal with issues that, quite frankly, don’t belong in the courts.” Anthony Hall, the Lethbridge University professor called by Kelly as an expert witness, told the court he’s been writing about aboriginal rights since 1981 and is now a full professor of native American studies. He rejected the “advocate” description of his role in the case, as suggested by the court. “Drawing attention (in court) is not advocacy, but looking at the hard realities,” he said. Continued: PROTEST/ p10
A female Kent prison guard viciously slashed by an inmate went public last week to highlight safety concerns at the maximum-security institution. “It’s not just my safety, but the safety of all the staff at the institution,” the 42-year-old correctional officer — who asked that only her initials C.W. be used in this story — said in an interview with The Progress. Gord Robertson, Pacific region president of the Union of Canadian Correction Officers, called prison guards like C.W. the “unsung heroes” of Canada’s judicial system, working in a dangerous place where no one else wants to go. Yet the union still meets with “resistance” from prison management when it raises staff safety concerns, he said. The union had to go outside the correctional system to get the plastic disposable razors banned that it’s believed was used in the June 23 attack on C.W. Continued: GUARDS/ p4
Slash to prison guard’s face was so deep it cut into the jaw bone. SUBMITTED
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