More mental health resources needed in remote First Nations, jury hears during Moses Beaver inquest

WARNING: This story discusses mental distress and suicide. 

Calls to improve mental health care resources in remote First Nations in northwestern Ontario continue to be at the forefront of the inquest into the death of Moses Amik Beaver.

The 56-year-old Woodlands artist from Nibinamik, an Oji-Cree First Nation, died in Thunder Bay, Ont. in February 2017 after he was found unresponsive in his cell in the Thunder Bay District Jail.

It remains unclear exactly how Beaver died; the jury is expected to hear more on Beaver's official cause of death in the coming weeks.

More than six years later, an inquest into his death – which is mandatory under the Ontario Coroner's Act when a person dies in custody – has started putting together the pieces of how and why Beaver came to his death.

The jury consists of one white man, three white women and one Indigenous woman.

Beaver is one of 13 people who have died in the Thunder Bay District Jail since 2002. His inquest comes on the heels of an inquest completed in November into the deaths of Don Mamakwa of Kasabonika Lake and Roland McKay of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug.

The jury first heard from Melanie Huddart-Amik, the mother of Beaver's youngest son, who explained the story behind his name Amik. It was his great grandfather's surname, before missionaries anglicized it to Beaver.

While Beaver has been described as an artist with mental health issues, Huddart-Amik said it is important for the jury to know he was much more than that.

Beaver was the family patriarch, a beloved father of four "with land-based skills second to none." He could survive alone in the wilderness with a single tool. He made sure everyone in the First Nation had working smoke detectors. He taught Huddart-Amik how to swaddle their son in a tikinagan, or cradleboard, and treat diaper rash with bear grease, she told the jury. 

He was also someone who experienced "almost insurmountable loss in his lifetime," she said, contending with several deaths in the family as well as intergenerational trauma.

"Moses in many ways was larger than life itself but he was a human being who, like anyone else, struggled and made mistakes but who strove to be a better person," Huddart-Amik said. "He forged on in a quest to improve, to learn more and become a solid role model that his sons and community could be proud of."

Jurors heard detailed accounts of what transpired between Jan. 14 and 18, 2017 in Nibinamik, when Beaver was experiencing a mental health crisis.

The initial plan was for Beaver to get psychiatric care at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, registered nurse Paul Hesche told the jury. Hesche was the charge nurse at Nibinamik's nursing station in 2017 but has since retired.