They asked for help and got body bags.
Aboriginal leaders said they were outraged and confused when dozens of body bags were delivered to remote Manitoba reserves after native communities demanded federal resources to fight a second wave of the H1N1 flu outbreak.
Chiefs interpreted the grim shipments as a dire prediction of what Ottawa expects will happen during this flu season to natives, who were hardest hit by swine flu in the spring.
Some communities didn't hold on to them for long. In a symbolic protest Wednesday evening, northern First Nations leaders returned a box of the bags to a Health Canada office in Winnipeg. Tossing more than a dozen of the polyethylene bags on the floor outside the building's lobby, Garden Hill First Nation chief David Harper called the deliveries “an insult.”
The federal government was left scrambling late Wednesday to explain the shipments, which also included hand sanitizer, masks and gloves.
Each bag contained full post-mortem kits that included a chin strap, five tie-straps and three identification tags.
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The mild flu outbreak in the spring erupted into a full-blown crisis on several of Manitoba's remote reserves. At one point, aboriginals comprised two-thirds of Manitoba flu patients on respirators. Health Canada came under fire for hesitating to send hand sanitizer to native towns because of concerns that people would ingest the alcohol-based gel.
