Hundreds gather to remember victims of violence

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About 450 people gathered at Prince Albert city hall on June 10 to take part in a memorial walk to honour the lives and memories of Shirley Lonethunder, Pamela Jean George, Cynthia Louise Sanderson and Maxine Wapass.

These women, all from Saskatchewan, were among those whose deaths or disappearances were chronicled in Stolen Sisters: A Human Rights Response to Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women In Canada, a report by the human rights group Amnesty International released in October 2004. And it was these four women that organizers of the first Honouring Our Sisters Memorial Walk chose to remember during the event.

Among those who came to Prince Albert to take part in the memorial walk were the families of the four women who were being remembered. Others came from Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC) communities and from communities across the province.

The community of Prince Albert also rallied around the event, providing donations and support to help make the walk happen.

The idea for the memorial walk grew out of discussions between Corrine Fiddler, family violence program co-ordinator with the PAGC and Sandy Pitzel, program co-ordinator for Prince Albert and Area Community Against Family Violence.

"She had been talking about some different cases that had happened in Prince Albert, and I was talking to her about John Martin Crawford, the serial killer from Saskatoon, and how few people knew of him," Fiddler recalled. In 1996, Crawford was convicted of murdering three Aboriginal women-Eva Taysup, Shelley Napope and Calinda Waterhen.

"To me, it's unbelievable that so many people would not know about a serial killer that was so close to our community," Fiddler said.

Pitzel said her mother had always wanted to do something to honour First Nation women, so she and Fiddler put their heads together to decide just what the something should be.

They were aware of the walks in support of ending violence against women that take place across the country each Dec. 6, marking the anniversary of the killing of 14 female students at a technical institute in Montreal in 1989, but knew that the women honoured in those marches live in a different world than those they intended to honour.

"The people that we work with are, for the most part, from a poorer background. They don't have an education, and society tends to view them as throwaway women, or they're just not valued. So we want to honour those women and their families because, no matter what, these are women that belonged and they were cared for and they were loved, and they did mean something to their families."

Fiddler and Pitzel started to plan the walk in January 2004. When the Amnesty International report came out later that year, they decided to focus the walk on the Saskatchewan women whose deaths and disappearances were included in the report.

"Each year that we do this we will focus on different women," Fiddler said. "We honour all the women, but we will focus on specific ones for each walk." The plan is to hold a memorial walk each year on June 10. That date holds no special significance, but was chosen in hopes that the weather on that date would be suitable for a walk-not too hot, not too cold.

"With First Nations culture, we do have a lot of Elders that like to participate. We want to make that as comfortable as possible," she said.

The memorial walk serves to remind people about these women, and of the need to work to ensure that more women don't meet similar fates. But the event was also held to honour the families of the women.

"We really want to give the recognition back to your family that, no matter what position your daughter was in, that she did have a place in society, and nobody had that right to take her life from her," Fiddler said.

The walkers gathered at city hall and walked four kilometres-one for each of the women being remembered-to the PAGC Childcare Education gymnasium. A drum group dd an honour song for the women and, following a few speeches, the walk got under way.

"We had four stops along the way, along this walk, for these four women," Corrine Fiddler said.

"At each stop somebody would read a mini bio about these women and the bios were taken directly from the Stolen Sisters report."

Crosses were set up at each stop and, after each biography was read, roses and daises were laid at the site and a poem was read.

The entire experience was a bit overwhelming for the families of the women being honoured, Fiddler said.

"It gave them, I guess, a positive affirmation that yes, people do care, you know? There's people that gave up their free time or people who took time off work. People who drove from their communities to take part."

Members of one family told Fiddler how honoured they felt that someone would take the time to organize such an event.

"And the fact that they got to come together in a very healing, caring circle, with everyone together and everybody there for the same reasons, to honour these women, they felt that it was just phenomenal, that they were able to come together and realize that people didn't forget. Because even though society may forget, the families never forget."