Sisters in spirit walk the talk through city

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Kurt Ahenekew Gold lost his mother to the violence of downtown Edmonton before he was five years old.

"It's hard looking at a picture of your mother and not remembering her face," he said standing next to his younger brother Dallas, both choking back tears.

He was thanking a group of people who had come to honor the memories of women like his mother. He and Dallas, his aunt, uncle and cousin joined about 40 others in the Sisters in Spirit candlelight walk and vigil held in the city on April 28, organized by the Edmonton chapter of the Alberta Aboriginal Women's Society.

Sisters in Spirit was established by the Native Women's Association of Canada to pay tribute to and raise awareness of the 500 Native women who have gone missing or have been murdered in Canada over the past 20 years. Literature from the organization states that in Canada, Aboriginal women continue to be targets of hatred and violence because of their gender and their race.

"They continue to be objectified, disrespected, dishonored, ignored and killed, often with impunity."

Kurt and Dallas' mom, Bernadette Ahenakew, 22, was found strangled in a ditch on a rural road near Sherwood Park in 1989. Hers is one of many unsolved murders police are investigating, looking to the possibility that a serial killer is at work finding victims among vulnerable women in Edmonton's sex trade.

Nancy Masuskapoe is Bernadette's sister. She mourns not just Bernadette, but another sister, Laura Ann Ahenakew, 22, who met a violent end in 1990.

"The pain is so great sometimes," said Masuskapoe about when she thinks about her sisters.

She said too many women are being violated and abused, too many have lost their lives to violence. "It has to stop."

"One way is to teach our children, especially our boys and men, that violence is unacceptable...Women need to teach their children to be gentle, to respect life," Masuskapoe said.

When her daughter, JoAnne Ahenekew, vice-president of the Edmonton chapter of the women's society, saw Bernadette's and Laura Ann's names on the Sisters in Spirit posters sent from the national organization, she was very excited and phoned the family right away.

"My family, we grieved so hard, and we still do for them," said JoAnne. "It was nice to know that there were sisters out there that are bringing awareness, other than our family. It was nice to know that our sisters out there in Canada care about getting this to stop, and it felt really good. It was really uplifting," who add she felt a part of a bigger, stronger picture.

The walkers began at Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples and made their way down one of Edmonton's most desperate stretches of road-96 Street.

Walkers passed shelters and centres where the down and out, addicted and afflicted find some relief from their harsh lives. It was a quiet night, with a few cars passing and a few Native men on bicycles peddling by.

"Come and join us," invited one of the walkers.

Some walkers tried to sing, but most just walked in silence. They made their way to the Edmonton City Police building where they posed briefly for a picture to commemorate the occasion.

Muriel Stanley Venne, president of the Institute for the Advancement of Aboriginal Women, was among the participants. She said the event was important to raise some level of awareness of the barriers faced by Aboriginal women in Canada today.

"Awareness is just the first stage. The next stage has to be the solutions and the changes in attitudes and the changes in opportunities, and the respect for our women and a lot of things that have to happen, you know, after the awareness."

Muriel Stanley Venne said poverty, isolation and discrimination are at the heart of the difficulties Aboriginal women experience.

"And isolation is both psychological and physical, all stemming from poverty, because if you haven't got enough money then you haven't got opportunities for your children or yoursef."

Her organization is proposing that the next decade, 2005 to 2015, be proclaimed the decade of difference.

"The decade for Aboriginal women in which we address the issues that they are faced with...If there are no resources and no political will to help the women, then nothing will happen. And that's what Canada is faced with now. They have the policies. They don't put any amount of realistic resources into helping the women.

"And it's quite astonishing for the Canadian government to say that this is the best country in the world, but at the same time to have Aboriginal women in this country with the highest mortality rate, the highest death rate... You know, it's the blight on Canada," she said.

Stanely Venne thought the police station was an appropriate place for the walkers to pause.

"We did a study with the RCMP and with the City of Edmonton Police force into the impact of the cross-cultural training of their members in regards to Aboriginal women. We weren't even on the radar map, so what we came up with was that the training has to be geared to point of contact. In other words, it's all nice to know about Aboriginal culture, but if it doesn't help you when you are dealing with the people that you have to deal with, the Aboriginal people, then it's that, just nice to know."

Jackie Loyer is president of the Edmonton chapter of the Alberta Aboriginal Women's Society.

She said the walk went to the police station as an outcry to say, "'Hey, we need help with our missing sisters. When are you going to start doing something?"

Loyer wants the police to understand that Aboriginal people should be treated with respect and courtesy and not looked at as just another drunken Indian, another doped-up person off the street.

"We are all human beings. We all bleed the same. And it doesn't matter what color you are. Just because our skin is brown, doesn't mean that we don't have feelings, we don't hurt."