A long-awaited inquest into the deaths of seven young aboriginals has been abruptly halted due to a lack of native representation on jury rolls.

The inquest, which had been slated to begin this fall in Thunder Bay, won’t happen this year due to the longstanding concerns with the rolls, Ontario’s chief coroner, Dirk Huyer, said in an interview Monday.

The inquest was called after a Star series detailed a lack of investigation into the deaths of the students who had to leave their reserves in northern Ontario to attend high school in Thunder Bay.

Six young males were found drowned in the waters leading to Lake Superior, and a female asphyxiated in an alleged alcohol-related incident.

But the hearing into their deaths, and 11 other inquests involving the deaths of aboriginal people, are now on hold over jury roll concerns — an issue the Supreme Court of Canada will tackle in a separate case later this year.

The delay of the inquest into the seven deaths has caused “obvious disappointment’’ for the victims’ families, said Christa Big Canoe, a lawyer and director at Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, which is representing six of the families.

“But some of the families said they’re not surprised, given the number of times we’ve had to inform them the inquest has been delayed,’’ Big Canoe added.

The chief coroner recently sent correspondence to Ontario’s Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth and Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto informing them that the inquest into the deaths of Reggie Bushie, Jethro Anderson, Jordan Wabasse, all 15 years old, along with Kyle Morriseau, 17, Curran Strang and Robyn Harper, both 18, and Paul Panacheese, 21, is on hold, pending a public examination of Thunder Bay’s 2015 jury roll.

That examination is being done with the coroner’s office, First Nation groups, and Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General.

No date for the resumption of this inquest or the 11 others has been set.

Huyer, the coroner, said he made his decision based on a court decision this past April in the Wabason case in Thunder Bay.

A trial for Shaldon Wabason on charges of second-degree murder and breaking-and-entering was set to start in April in Thunder Bay but was stayed for a year after a judge in the Superior Court of Justice in Thunder Bay ruled Wabason’s Charter rights were breached because the Crown failed to make “reasonable efforts” to meet its obligations regarding First Nation representation on the jury list.

In ordering the stay, the Thunder Bay judge ruled that the jury in the trial next year for Wabason be chosen from the 2015 roll.

“The (Wabason) decision was something I considered very carefully when I was making my decision,’’ Huyer said.

Jurors who serve on inquests and criminal court trials are chosen from jury rolls typically prepared the previous year.

Low native representation on jury rolls – particularly in trials or inquests held in communities with large native populations, and where the victims or accused are native – has long been an issue of concern.

It’s the subject of an upcoming appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada involving Clifford Kokopenace, who on June 17, 2008, in Kenora, was convicted by a jury of manslaughter in the death of a friend on the Grassy Narrows reserve, in northwestern Ontario.

That jury had no aboriginal members.

The roll from which that jury was chosen consisted of 699 potential jurors, 29 of whom were on-reserve Indians — or 4.1 per cent of the roll — even though on-reserve First Nation members were roughly one-third of the 65,000 people living in the district at the time.

Causes of the problems range from bureaucratic inefficiencies to distrust by aboriginals of the justice system, experts say.

Meanwhile, jury trials pertaining to criminal cases in the Thunder Bay and Kenora districts are being scheduled in the normal course, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s ministry told the Star Monday.

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“In the event there is a challenge to the jury roll, the Crown will respond to the application,’’ spokesperson Heather Visser added.

Nishnawbe-Aski Nation (NAN), a political organization for 49 northern First Nations, stopped the Reggie Bushie inquest process in 2009, (the inquest was just about him initially, but was later expanded to include the six other young people) and took the province to court over questions regarding aboriginal participation on the jury.

In March 2011, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled NAN was right. The court said the Ontario coroner’s office was not “forthcoming about how the roll was established” and that native families’ requests to find out how the jury was selected were reasonable, yet they consistently got the “runaround.”