[LINK] "The life and death of Donald Marshall"

[rfmcdonald]

Mi'kmaq activist Donald Marshall is dead.

Like many teenagers, Donald Marshall drank, smoked and hung around the local park with rowdy friends. He might have grown up to become a stalwart citizen, a native leader, an entrepreneur.

We will never know because he lost the chance to realize his ambitions when he was convicted of murder, at 17, and imprisoned for 11 years for a crime he didn't commit. By the time he was finally released on parole in 1982, he was forever damaged by a miscarriage of justice and years of detention.

And yet, despite the tragedies of his later life, his name is synonymous with the fight for justice for the wrongfully convicted. He broke the trail for others, including David Milgaard and Guy Paul Morin, in challenging the legal system. The 1990 royal commission into his case produced 82 recommendations that fundamentally changed the criminal justice system in Nova Scotia. “He had a huge potential for leadership, which was never crushed by his imprisonment and which enabled him to contribute to the native community in Canada,” said lawyer Clayton Ruby, a member of Mr. Marshall's legal team before the royal commission.

A proud Mi'kmaq, Mr. Marshall is also a hero in the battle against racism toward aboriginals in this country. He spent six years fighting discrimination in the courts to challenge the federal government's denial of the historic treaty rights granted to his people by the British Crown in 1760, a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

“He was a really shy person, but he was brave enough to go through the limelight a couple of times to change both the provincial systems and the federal ones and to make very significant changes,” said Terry Paul, Chief of the Membertou Nation. “It is a tragic loss not only for me, being a personal friend, but for the aboriginal people across the country.

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