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By LeRae Haynes

There’s nothing like a body bag to make a statement. It has a connotation of finality, tidying up after an unfortunate incident and zipping things away out of sight. I can only imagine what residents in remote Manitoba First Nations communities thought when up to 30 body bags arrived at their nursing stations, along with their flu kits and regular medical supplies.

In fact, approximately 200 body bags were shipped to northern reserves and now everybody’s scrambling to apologize. Jim Wolfe, director of First Nations and Inuit Health for Manitoba is sorry, Health Canada is sorry and Stephen Harper is sounding off like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland: ‘Heads are going to ROLL for this!’

There were high numbers of people in the remote northern reserves affected by the Swine Flu, but it still seems to me that body bags send the wrong message. ‘We care about your health and well-being’ could possibly have been better expressed by sending extra vitamins to boost the immune system, for example.

If I took a prescription from my doctor into the pharmacy and instead of a bottle of antibiotics I was handed a body bag, I would certainly get the message. ‘Too bad for you: here, this’ll help keep things tidy.’

This latest apology comes ringing on the heels of Canada’s official apology last year for residential schools. ‘Too little, too late,’ was a common response to that one, and it seems that saying ‘sorry for all the body bags’ may be eliciting a similar retort.

I admire the spirited response from one First Nations leader who dumped the body bags on the front steps of the Health Canada building in Winnipeg and marked them, ‘Return to Sender.’

Sometimes it just isn’t enough to say ‘sorry.’ There may not be anything you can do about it to make it better, and issuing an official apology might at least show that you are aware of what you did wrong and feel really bad about it, but the apology itself may just make people madder. At least for a while.

Maybe government officials, leaders and beaurocrats are doing a spirited version of the ‘apology scramble’ because down deep, they already feel guilty about how First Nations people have been traditionally treated in many places in Canada. Or, maybe they’re just saying, ‘Look---we didn’t mean anything sinister by this. It was just a mistake.’

Whatever the reason, I think they’re going to be apologizing and explaining for a while, and some heads may quite possibly roll. I just hope that body bags don’t become a way to send a message in Canada. I hope we stick with flowers and e-cards instead.

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