In October of 2015, Hamline University School of Law’s Dispute Resolution Institute held a Symposium titled, An Intentional Conversation About Public Engagement and Decision-Making: Moving from Dysfunction and Polarization to Dialogue and Understanding. The focus was on Minnesota as a microcosm of the larger national conversation. Earlier that same year, Minnesotans saw a drama unfold that resulted from an egregious absence of conversation, dialogue, and understanding between the governmental and medical establishments of the State and its indigenous people. The misunderstandings were especially prevalent in county governments near reservations in greater Minnesota. From February through May of 2015, the dysfunction that resulted from the failure of the counties to communicate or understand another culture played out in courts and finally the legislature. For the Indian people involved, the polarization could only be quelled, and dignity restored, by a change in the laws of Minnesota. This chapter was closed when the Governor signed a new law. However, the entire situation itself demonstrates the dire need for an ongoing, meaningful dialogue between State officials at all levels and Minnesota’s Native American citizens, as well as a better understanding of Minnesota’s seven Anishinabe and four Dakota reservations.
–Prof. Tadd Johnson, Esq., Symposium Participant
In 2015, the Minnesota legislature amended its autopsy statute to allow for objections to autopsies based upon religious beliefs and practices. Minnesota was not the first state to allow for religious objection to autopsies, but what may have been unique in this instance was that the cases that inspired the law came from Native American families practicing a religion that pre-dates 1492, rather than the standard origin of such laws—the Judeo-Christian tradition.
The traditional religion practiced by many Anishinabe (Ojibwe/Chippewa) in east-central and northern Minnesota is not known to most Minnesotans, and the families’ objections to autopsies caused great skepticism among some state officials. The county governments of Minnesota, as well as the contracted medical examiner serving both Carlton and St. Louis County, were uncertain how to react to the objections of American Indians.
Even after a local judge signed ex parte court orders demanding the release of the remains to the families’ relatives, the county attorneys, sheriffs, and especially the medical examiner were uncertain the court order applied, at least in part, because the existing statute had no provision for religious objections. The legislature eventually dealt with the law’s vagueness by amending the statute to allow for a judicial proceeding in which families could object to autopsies on religious grounds.
One fundamental problem in the underlying cases is a failure of the government and medical examiner to attempt to speak with the families or properly address their concerns. It was an example of how failure to communicate, and later the failure of the medical examiner to consider that cultural practices previously unknown to him may still constitute sincerely held religious beliefs, required a change in law and policy. In addition to allowing an objection to an autopsy and a court proceeding, the law now requires communication between medical examiners and the families of the deceased.