PACHEEDAHT ACTIVIST TSEYBAYOTL (HARRIET NAHANEE) DIED AFTER CUSTODY

Harriet Nahanee, Indigenous rights activist and environmental activist, died in Vancouver, British Columbia, following serving a two-week sentence in a provincial jail in January 2007 for criminal contempt of court for her part in the Sea-to-Sky Highway expansion protest at Eagleridge Bluffs. She was hospitalized with pneumonia a week after her release, at which time doctors discovered she had lung cancer. She died of pneumonia and complications in Vancouver. Nahanee had been weak from the flu and asthma in January, and it was widely suspected that Nahanee’s condition worsened during her incarceration at the Surrey Pre-Trial Centre. Nahanee was born in British Columbia, on December 7, 1935. She was from the Pacheedaht who are part of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Indigenous peoples from the Vancouver Island, but later married into the Squamish. As a child, she went to residential schools and would later testify about the horrible treatment she received there.
Source: “Harriet Nahanee,” Alcheron, 3/12/2018. Retrieved 6/9/2019, https://alchetron.com/Harriet-Nahanee Photo: Rob Baxter, 3/30/2007. Permissive use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/