Tootsie Jimmy-Charlie’s younger sister said her family had mixed emotions after Yukon RCMP apologized for failing to properly investigate Jimmy-Charlie’s death
Family members are still searching for answers after the RCMP apologized for not properly investigating an Indigenous woman’s death more than five decades ago.
On Friday, Yukon RCMP apologized to friends and relatives of Jimmy-Charlie at the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre in Whitehorse for failing to properly investigate her death. “That’s all that we can pray for now – that Indigenous women aren’t treated with racism and the RCMP respond immediately and do the search immediately,” said Maje Raider, who was 16 when her sister died.“She was very compassionate and caring and she adored her children,” she said.
“Your experience was not up to the standards of our policies and procedures today, and we were not the police service you needed and deserved.” “To this day, the dump in Whitehorse remains far from everything. Their report makes it sound like she just walked there herself and died on a pile of garbage. No one does that. No one,” Jimmy-Charlie’s daughter, Darlene Jimmy, wrote in the statement.
Under the Indian Act at the time, it was illegal for Indigenous people to purchase or consume alcohol and they weren’t allowed to hire legal representation.