The family of Raymond Silverfox extended a formal invitation to a healing circle to the Yukon's top Mountie Thursday, in what both sides hope is the first step toward healing the rift between the Little Salmon-Carmacks people and the RCMP.

"We have to show (our elders) what we are going to do differently,” Leta Backjack told Chief Supt. Peter Clark at a gathering of the Silverfox family, police, media, and members of the RCMP complaints commission.

"It's time for you to come to our community and do a circle.... The trust has been broken and it needs to be rebuilt.”

The olive branch came on the heels of the commission's report on the in-custody death of Silverfox, the Carmacks man who died in police cells in Whitehorse in December 2008.

"Simply stated, the case of Raymond Silverfox represents a failure on the part of RCMP members to provide reasonable care to an individual who was clearly in a state of physical distress,” commission spokesperson Jamie Robertson said in summarizing the report.

The officers who were supposed to care for Silverfox "descended into callousness and open mockery,” he said.

"In this case, the standards that are expected of a police force in how they treat people in their custody, were obviously not met.”

Members of the Silverfox family and the Little Salmon community wiped tears from their eyes as Robertson briefly outlined the details of the 43-year-old man's final 13 hours of life – 13 hours which he spent lying on the bare floor of a police cell being violently sick, but never getting any help until he had already stopped breathing.

"We failed you and we failed ourselves,” Clark said in a sombre address to the 50-odd people who gathered in the meeting room of the Skookum Jim Friendship Centre Thursday afternoon

"... Mr. Silverfox deserved better from us, and there is no question we fell short.”

They were words he has said before, but Thursday's gathering was the first time the chief has spoken directly to Silverfox's family and community.

It was also an opportunity for the community to ask why Const. Shirley Telep – one of the officers who saw and commented on Silverfox's dire condition the day he died, but did nothing to help him – had been posted to Carmacks last winter.

"It was very upsetting and unsettling for the community,” said Blackjack, who is deputy chief of the Little Salmon-Carmacks First Nation and a cousin of Silverfox.

"... People asked, ‘How dare they put her in the community when she was one of the officers who mocked Raymond?'”

Clark said he didn't know Telep had been posted to the community, and could not explain why whoever sent her there on a temporary fill-in was not aware of her negative connection to the community.

Later, Blackjack said she was satisfied with the superintendent's response.

She said she wanted to know he was aware of the blunder and would be available to talk personally about any other conflicts between the RCMP and the First Nation.

Not everyone was satisfied, however.

Silverfox's sister, Dolores Landstrom, said she felt the officers who mistreated her brother "need more discipline”.

"I think they use their uniform to bully people,” she said.

Her comment spoke to the rift which still separates the police from the Little Salmon-Carmacks community.

Throughout the afternoon, the same question was asked again and again, by members of the family, reporters, and even rhetorically by Clark himself: How will the broken trust be repaired?

There was no immediate answer, but by the end of the day, as Blackjack and Clark stood talking together, some steps forward had clearly been taken.

"He wants to try, he wants to improve,” Blackjack said of Clark after they had spoken.

"We both agreed that (a healing circle) has to happen – for the family, for the community, and for the police too.”