She received virtually every pathologizing mental health and behavioural label over the years. She resisted every one. Her initiative is one of the inspirations for a project with Native Women’s Association of Canada whereby we are working together to intervene in the cases of Aboriginal women before they are convicted and sentenced to prison. So far, one woman who started with a first degree murder charge may soon see the police and prosecutors withdrawing the charge laid against her and her name should be cleared.

As Robbie told us yesterday, women, especially Aboriginal women and women who have been bashed and raped, have no illusions that the state is out to protect them. They know that is not true. In fact, many take on the responsibility of protecting their loved ones, their families, their communities from the state. They take responsibility for not just their own actions, but also those of the people closest to them. When Sandy’s sister prisoner wanted to die but needed some assistance because her palsied limbs failed her…Sandy refused to shrink from the request and then took full responsibility for her death. That death is still listed by the state as a suicide and there are no prisoners nor even state authorities who believe Sandy’s part, if any, was more than an assisted suicide. But she rejected legal external definitions of who she was and what she did and insisted on taking full responsibility for the death of her sister prisoner.

We, her allies, alongside her sister prisoners and formers prisoner with Womyn4Justice and Strength in Sisterhood, have been trying for the intervening 11 years to encourage her to allow us to try to re-open her case. Two months ago, she called and wanted me to get all of her files and finally agreed to work at re-opening her case of wrongful conviction. She also wanted me to get all of her medical files. Two weeks later a prison doctor certified her. Three weeks later she was on life support. Due to some interventions involving her legal team of Aboriginal lawyers, she is now reclassified as a medium security prisoner and the armed guards who escorted her to hospital and those who sat at her bedside are gone – at least temporarily - we presume we will be revisiting this struggle if/when she regains consciousness. If by some miracle this amazingly strong proud woman does not die, the fight will be on and we will persist in our efforts to get her out! It perhaps goes without saying that if she dies, the fight will also be on. If the tables were turned, she would likely be facing charges of attempted murder; so we might all well ask why are the responsible corrections staff not facing attempted murder charges? Our experience is that they will not likely even be sanctioned for any part played in putting her life at risk.

Indeed, it is with regret that I am here, alone, in the absence of the women with whom I have the privilege of walking. Given the urgency we all feel, or should feel, about the increased criminalization of women and girls worldwide, my hope is that we will truly engage and work to correct what is fundamentally flawed and wrong about current attempts to reform and correct or change individual and/or groups of women, when it is increasingly the laws and policies within which we all work that are increasingly coming in to conflict with people, especially poor, racialized, and disabled women.