Let's make it clear

Page 5

Editor's note: Last month Windspeaker wrote in this space about racism and cops. We listed a number of people, who, through some action by or dealing with the police, had come to some harm or whose cases were mishandled. In among that long list were the names Lucy Pedoniquott, Shelley Napope, Eva Taysup and Calinda Waterhen. Because of a missed semi-colon, the editorial read as though these women were among the women murdered or missing in the Vancouver area, some of whose bodies have been located at the Pickton pig farm just outside the city. This is not the case.

Lucy Pedoniquott, dressed only in a hospital gown and slippers, went missing from a Wiarton, Ont. hospital, and the Ontario Provincial Police department did little to help find the weak, sick woman. Ms. Pedoniquott was found just metres away from the hospital, frozen to death in an icy swamp. In April 2003, the Wiarton OPP made a public apology to the family, saying they should have done more. The story of the apology can be found online at www.ammsa.com in the May 2003 edition of Windspeaker.

Napope, Taysup, and Waterhen were three Native women killed by John Martin Crawford. The police investigation into their murders has been widely criticized, and those criticisms were documented in the book by Warren Goulding entitled Just Another Indian: A Serial Killer and Canada's Indifference.

We received a call from Ms. Pedoniquott's nephew calling attention to the confusion our editorial caused. We thank him for taking the time to ask us to set the record straight. We apologize to him and to his extended family and the families of the other women for the confusion our mistake caused.