Aboriginal children now have the right to refuse life-saving medical treatment in favour of traditional healing.

The Friday ruling has nothing to do with whether aboriginal medicine works. Family court heard unequivocally in the case of a First Nations girl refusing chemotherapy that no child has survived acute lymphoblastic leukemia without treatment.

Instead, it’s about Canada’s Constitution protecting aboriginal rights.

Ontario Court Justice Gethin Edward has now expanded those rights to include traditional healing, saying “there is no question it forms an integral part.”

“This is monumental for our people all across the country,” said Six Nations Chief Ava Hill. “This is precedent-setting for us.”

First Nations spectators in the standing-room-only Brantford courtroom burst into applause and tears as Edward dismissed an application by McMaster Children’s Hospital to have the girl apprehended by Brant Family and Children’s Services and forced into treatment. That agency had refused to intervene.

“I feel I’ve transcended something bigger than all of us,” said the girl’s aunt when she phoned the mother to deliver the news. The girl and her family can’t be identified because of a publication ban.

Hospital president Dr. Peter Fitzgerald says there are no plans to appeal the ruling at this time.

“My main concern is for this child’s life,” he said. “Without treatment this child has no chance of survival. We really want to keep our doors open to the family and reach out as much as possible.”

The judge sided with McMaster on all other issues. He ruled the girl was not capable of making her own medical decisions. He affirmed that a court is the place to decide these cases, not Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board. He agrees she requires medical treatment that her “caring loving” parent is not providing.

The hospital told court that before she withdrew from treatment in August, the girl had a 90 to 95 per cent chance of being cured by chemotherapy done in phases. However, in the end, it came down to Edward’s conclusion that the mother’s choice to pursue traditional medicine “is her aboriginal right.”

“This is not an eleventh hour epiphany employed to take her daughter out of the rigours of chemotherapy,” the judge wrote in his decision. “Rather it is a decision made by a mother, on behalf of a daughter she truly loves, steeped in a practice that has been rooted in their culture from its beginnings.”

“It is this Court’s conclusion therefore, that (the mother’s) decision to pursue traditional medicine for her daughter is her aboriginal right. Further, such a right cannot be qualified as a right only if it is proven to work by employing the western medical paradigm. To do so would be to leave open the opportunity to perpetually erode aboriginal rights.”

“It was the right decision,” said New Credit Chief Bryan LaForme. “He could not rule any other way. It’s upholding our traditional rights.”

He raised the prospect along with Hill of First Nations creating its own child welfare agency.

“We have a right to look after our own kids,” said Hill. “We’re not going to let anyone take our kids. This is a big boost for this.”

The chiefs say the girl in this case as well as another aboriginal girl, who refused chemotherapy, are both healthy. However, court heard the other girl — Makayla Sault — has relapsed.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Sault’s father, well-known in the area as a pastor at the New Credit Fellowship Centre, asked churches to pray for her Nov. 9 after an infection left the New Credit girl close to death.

(Brant Family and Children’s Services also took no action after Sault’s withdrawal from chemotherapy. Sault said she saw a vision of Christ in her hospital room telling her she was already healed. The Sault family did not respond to a request for comment from The Spectator through their lawyer, Katherine Hensel.)

Both girls sought treatment at an American alternative health centre that is registered as a massage establishment and run by a nutrition counsellor. It promotes a positive attitude, eating a raw-plant-based organic diet and ridding your life of contaminants to heal cancer.

Sault went to the Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida, which believes in curing cancer with a positive attitude as well as eating a raw plant-based organic diet and clearing your life of contaminants. The other girl refusing chemotherapy — the subject of Friday’s ruling — sought similar treatment.

The institute’s co-director, Brian Clement, has come to Ontario — including the Six Nations reserve — at least twice in the past six months. A talk he gave in October was on the nutritional benefits of eating raw food, and the one in May was titled “All About Cancer and Conquering Disease with Living Foods.”

“Eat a raw plant-based organic diet,” Clement tells cancer patients in a promotional video for the institute. “This is how we’ve seen thousands and thousands of people reverse stage-four ‘catastrophic’ cancer.”

He also tells patients: “Change your lifestyle first with your attitude. Be positive.” In addition, patients are advised to make sure they don’t do things that “contaminate you and pollute you.”

The Hippocrates Health Institute is not traditional healing. However, Brant Family and Children’s Services executive director Andrew Koster says the girl was getting aboriginal medicine as well. In fact, Koster said that when he visited the mother “was preparing medicine on the stove.”

“My heart goes out to (the girl) and her family,” said Koster who was “so proud” to be part of a decision that furthered aboriginal rights.

“I’m glad out of a tragic situation we have certain rights confirmed.”