Sculpture unveiled honoring memory of Leo LaChance

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More than 10 years after Leo LaChance was shot to death by white supremacist Carney Nerland, a sculpture of LaChance has been unveiled near the site where he fell.

The sculpture was unveiled Sept. 27 on the grounds of the new provincial courthouse on River Street in Prince Albert, on the same block where LaChance was killed.

LaChance, a Native trapper, died Jan. 28, 1991 after being shot by Nerland, then the Saskatchewan leader of the Church of Jesus Christ-Aryan Nations.

While LaChance's death at the hands of a white supremacists angered many in Prince Albert and elsewhere, that anger grew when Nerland was charged with manslaughter rather than murder, and received a four year sentence. Despite Nerland's ties to the Aryan Nations, the police investigation found no link between his racist views and the killing of LaChance, which was viewed as an accident by investigators. In April 1991, Nerland pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charge and was sent to Stoney Mountain Penitentiary. In December 1993 he was released from jail, and was put in the RCMP witness protection program.

"I'm sure it's going to affect all the Aboriginal people in Canada," LaChance's sister, Roseanna Moses said of the sculpture. "This is world wide, something that happened, and, as always, the justice system never completely satisfies when something happens to Aboriginal people. You know, there never was any satisfaction for the family about the guy that did this. All he did was only a year and a half, and he was out."

Maxine Hodgson is director of the Aboriginal and Northern Justice Initiatives branch of Saskatchewan Justice. She said that when the department found out the new courthouse was to be built on the site where LaChance had been shot, they consulted with some Elders, who decided a pipe ceremony was needed to clear the land.

Coming out of discussions between the department, the Elders and the LaChance family, Hodgson said, "was the whole idea of 'we need to talk, we need to move on.' The Elders talked about the importance of forgiveness, but not forgetting, and Mr. Dave LaChance (Leo LaChance's brother) talked about forgiveness and getting on, but needing something that would be a reminder to all people of what had happened, and that Leo not be forgotten as a person."

"It's just amazing how fate turns out," Moses said of the coincidence that the location chosen for the new courthouse was the same place where her brother died.

Just months before she received the call from Saskatchewan Justice telling her of their plans to place some sort of memorial on the site, Moses had visited the site for herself.

"I went there to bring some flowers on the site. I went walking from the site where he got shot. When he walked, he managed to walk about, I don't know how many yards. Even though he got shot, he managed to walk. And then I walked that path, and I was carrying these flowers, and I was walking slow, imagining, you know, the pain he felt and where I thought he fell down, just about at the place where he fell down, and on the site there, I put my flowers . . . and I thought, 'why can't the Saskatchewan Justice put some kind of memorial here?'

"So I put my flowers there, and I said a little prayer for my brother, and I was wondering, 'What can I do? What can be done here to give me some sense of what happened? Anyway, I cam back home, and about a month later, or a couple of months, something like that, and they phoned me and said, did you know there's a court house being built by where your brother got shot? No, I said. I didn't know, I said. But anyway, that's when they told me that we're going to be doing something. They didn't have an idea right away what it was. Then I told them, I was there a couple of months ago. Here's what I had in mind. What a coincidence. Everything is just falling into place."

In addition to serving as a memorial for her brother, Roseanna Moses hopes the sculpture will help change attitudes of the peopl going into the courthouse every day.

"I hope this is what will change some of the attitude of the justice people -the lawyers, the judges, the RCMP and the police. The way they handle these Aboriginal people, the way they see them. Hopefully, this will help change their minds. Because this was what Leo was all about. If this thing comes through because of him, then that'll be something I would live with, and I could trust again, and live peacefully, without thinking back and being angry at the justice about what happened that day, the way the events turned out. Because we weren't very satisfied, we weren't satisfied at all. Nobody was," Moses said.

"I hope it comes up strong, and gives some hope for the Aboriginal people that this is something. That, at least, they don't go in there bowing their heads down, and going to court and say 'guilty'. I hope they'll be able to put their heads up and be proud of who they are, and hopefully because of who they are, that they'll be served by the justice in favor of them."

In an interview following the unveiling, Moses said the ceremony went well, although she was disappointed with the number of Aboriginal people that came out for the unveiling.

"I was a bit disappointed about the support. I needed more. This is not an issue for within the immediate family anymore. This is an issue with all the Aboriginals in Canada," Moses said.

"I needed to see more support from the Aboriginal people around that area, because this is an ongoing concern all the time. Don't just start crying when something happens to your family. Now is the time to start supporting these events. Show up and be heard. Be seen. I think that's the important step, to start doing that. Be there, even though you can't say anything. Just to be there and observe what's going on," she said.`

She is, however, pleased with the sculpture itself, and with the part that sculpture has played in her healing process.

"I feel more at peace, and I feel more like I could o there again. I feel like at least some parts of my healing, it's been done. At least the majority of it, anyway. But I guess it'll never go away," Moses said.

"At least I'll be able to go there now, that there's something there for me to go. It's not just to go and, like before, just to go and be sad, there was nothing came out of this. It felt like, before, that they owed me something when I would go there. Being owed something. What is it? Something is missing here. But now it's just like part of that has been given to me."

"What happened to Leo was tragic, terribly tragic," said Hodgson. "So how do we take this horrible situation, and turn it into something that reminds everyone that justice is a place that is for everyone, and everyone has to feel like they own justice; that justice is for them. And so we're hoping that by having Leo's sculpture there - there's a message on the sculpture from the family - that it certainly not only will remind Aboriginal people and make them feel better when they're walking into the system, but also to remind others that the system is about justice-it's supposed to be just and fair."