Media portrayal unfair

Page 5

Dear Editor:

I am a First Nations woman living on reserve. My home community consists of four reserves side by side. Recently, a tragedy happened on two of those reserves. Four people are dead in two separate incidents. Three of those people are First Nations and one just happened to be a Caucasian-North American. This Caucasian-North American man was in the right place for what he had to do at a very wrong time.

The media is playing out this story as a racial issue, because a Caucasian-North American man was killed by a First Nations person. What the media has failed to realize is that if the Sask-Tel employee had been of any other ethnic group, even First Nations, he would still be dead. Had I been there at the time instead of him, I would be dead. So race had nothing to do with why he died.

In the same incident that this man died, two young First Nations men died. You may not have heard about them, but here in our community we mourn their loss. You see, unlike the Sask-Tel employee, who had children and in his children lives on and has immortality, these two young men live on now only in our hearts and in our memories. When we die, they will die with us.

Our community is rebuilding itself after these tragedies. That rebuilding is made so much harder by the media trying to portray these incidents as something more than what they are.

These deaths were caused by very troubled people, whose troubles were further complicated by the use of drugs and alcohol. Their actions can never be undone, but is it fair or just to take our pain and to fear the people who are related to them or to anyone else born First Nations.

The media in the portrayal of these tragedies have clearly stated they feel a Caucasian-North American person's life is more important than First Nations or African-North American, or Asian-North American or every other ethnic-North American person's life. With their words they have incited fear in their hearts of our service providers to our First Nations communities. Where it would be prudent to make changes to policy for the protection of employees, these changes should be effective to all locations not just First Nations lands.

As a First Nations woman, I understand the fear that the media is inciting in the Caucasian-North American community. I have experienced this fear every time I have had to walk in any one of the many mainstream society's communities. All of us non-Caucasian-North Americans have. For those of us who choose to live in mainstream society communities, we are forced to suppress or give up the morals, values, customs, heritage, and the intangible quality that makes us who and what we are as people, as humans, just so we can fit in. But we never truly do.

We who are different than mainstream society are often feared, hated, considered sub-humans and treated with less respect and courtesy than those who make up the mainstream society. These injustices, the cruelty, the hatred, the fear, the anger and the violence, be it passive or aggressive, we live with, we deal with day in and day out. Some of us make excuses for mainstream society's behavior. Some of us put it down to ignorance. Some of us just stop caring. And some of us resort to alcohol and drugs to end the pain that we experience as result of the actions of the forementioned.

When one of our people die as a result of some of those actions taken against us, rarely do we receive full justice in the court systems or anywhere near the same media coverage. As much as we have ranted or raved against this, it has yet to be corrected. Still we survive and in surviving those traumas, we have endured both in the past and present and in the future yet to come. We strengthen ourselves both as individuals and ethnic communities. What we endure is not in vain because that strength we gain over the years and generation will be the strength we need when it's time to make our stand that will see that we are treated as equal as we have alwas been.

I've written this letter in hopes that any and all who read it will receive the strength that they need to overcome their fears, their sense of loss, their uncertainty, their prejudice, their racism, their ignorance, and, most importantly, the anger and violence often used when these emotions overwhelm us.

Sincerely

Marylynn Dumont