VANCOUVER - A tearful Peggy Clement said Tuesday racism played a part in a police decision to dump her drunk, incapacitated cousin like a pile of garbage in an alley, where he died of exposure nine years ago.

Clement's emotional testimony lead off a long-awaited public inquiry into the death of Frank Paul, a Mi'kmaq originally from New Brunswick.

Paul spent the last moments of his life alone and helpless after being removed from the city drunk tank and left in the Downtown Eastside, where he died of hypothermia.

"He had a hard life but I don't think he deserved to die the way he died,'' said Clement, adding she and her family have been waiting a long time for answers about what happened to Paul and why he was treated so callously.

Paul, 48, was found dead in the early-morning hours of Dec. 6, 1998, by someone looking for a cat.

Clement said her cousin led a tough life as a residential school student who became a drifter and migrant worker. He took his mother's 1983 death after a long illness particularly hard, she said.

Clement, who lives in the New Brunswick community of Elsipogtog, formerly known as Big Cove, said Paul grew up there.

He now is buried there, she said, but his spirit is not yet resting in peace almost a decade after he died of hypothermia under questionable circumstances.

She said Paul's younger sister, Frances Jodain, who lives outside Augusta, Maine, was too emotional to attend the inquiry.

The B.C. government ordered the inquiry after years of questions about why police dumped the heavily intoxicated aboriginal man in an alley.

That was only after several aboriginal groups, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the provincial Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner pushed relentlessly to have Paul's death examined at a public inquiry.

Cameron Ward, a lawyer for the 41,000-member United Native Nations Society, told the inquiry that it represents a historic opportunity to examine the shortage of resources for aboriginals and "the social safety net that's supposed to catch people like Paul.''

"Frank Paul, his family and the public deserve nothing less than a thorough examination of his death,'' Ward said of the man who was frequently picked up by police and taken to the drunk tank.

Ward rattled off the names of 37 aboriginal men and women who died while in police custody in British Columbia over the years, saying not one officer has ever been charged with any wrongdoing.

"Frank Paul has come to symbolize everything that is wrong with the institutions and systems that have been imposed by others,'' he said.

Ward said systemic racism toward aboriginals, especially in the justice system, is at the root of their troubles.

"An aboriginal person who looks sideways at a police officer can be beaten, jailed or killed,'' he said.

Ward said it's particularly disturbing that in British Columbia police investigate their own members and consider themselves above the law and immune from the consequences of their actions.

"Frank Joseph Paul met his untimely end in what I suggest are egregious circumstances,'' he told the inquiry.

The man died in an alley desperately ill and unable to move or call for help "as a police vehicle started up and drove away from him, receding into the winter darkness,'' Ward said.

A police internal investigation handed two officers involved one- and two-day suspensions and the police complaints commission decided further investigation was unnecessary.

Russell Sanderson, a former police sergeant in charge of the jail on the night Paul was released for the last time, is anxious to tell his side of the story, said his lawyer Kevin Woodall.

A video taken by a security camera at the jail showed Paul crawling on his hands and knees and officers dragging him by the arms from the drunk tank to a police wagon before he was taken to the alley and left there.

Outside the hearing, Clement said Paul had broken his leg years earlier but refused medical treatment and may not have been able to walk.

"I keep thinking about my mom,'' she said. "When she saw the video for the first time she started crying and she couldn't understand why something like that would happen.

"She kept asking, `Why did they do that to him?' and I didn't have any answers.''

The inquiry, headed by retired judge William Davies, is expected to hear from upwards of 60 witnesses before he hands down a report to the government next May.

"I hope it will make significant changes on how to handle people, especially in police custody, because the police are still there to protect and serve us,'' Clement said.

"Even though we might be aboriginal people we need to be treated like everybody else.''

Clement said Paul's family was called by the Vancouver Police Department more than a month after he died and told that he was the victim of a hit-and-run and that his body was found in a ditch.

"When they told us about the hit and run I was looking forward to hearing from them to let us know if somebody accidentally hit him or if they found somebody that hit him,'' she said.

Clement credited Dana Urban, formerly a senior lawyer with the B.C. Police Complaint Commission, for being instrumental in paving the way for the inquiry to take place.

She said Urban, also a former deputy commissioner, called her two years after the hit-and-run call from police to say Paul had died in police custody.

"He said he felt the case wasn't looked at carefully and that he couldn't forget the image of garbage being put outside (in the alley),'' she told the inquiry.

In 2002, Urban testified before a legislative committee and alleged that Don Morrison, the former head of the B.C. Police Complaint Commission, was too close to police and reluctant to allow public hearings into complaints.

It wasn't until after Morrison was replaced that the commission, which released the police videotape to Paul's family, recommended the government call an inquiry.

Kimberly Murray, executive director of Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, said the group has dealt with at least 11 inquiries across Canada involving in-custody deaths of native people.

"The police and governments place little value on the lives of aboriginal people,'' Murray testified.. "Why was Frank Paul left in an alleyway and left to die? It was because he was aboriginal.''