Friends, I usually don't make it a point to repeat the subject in a column from one similar in the last, but in the case of this story in News/North, excellently written by Sidney Cohen, the subject of our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls should at least bear the burden of a re-read, if only to drive the message home.
We men need to start working on the way we treat women.
Our Dene tradition teaches us that once you strike a woman, for whatever reason, you can no longer call yourself a man. This kind of action is not even worthy of an animal.
We all came from a woman and we should honour that and be thankful, every day.
When you've lost a sister, as close as Jayda's Joni, there is a good part of you missing, forever, and that loss is especially felt in a small Northern town like Fort McPherson, with a population of only 800.
What I cannot imagine is the kind of horror that comes out in a public story like this one, and in a court of law, for all to see. The poor woman was stabbed and beaten to death by her own husband, who then fled and denied ever doing so.
On top of that his sentence was reduced to only five years to serve!
As a society we should also take a good long look at how women are being treated in the courts. Every person has to be made to feel as if their lives count for something, and not handled as just another case.
As before, these are all examples of inter-generational residential school trauma, how past hurts come back to not only haunt, but to strike out and kill, even right in your very own family.
And there is nowhere we can hide from all of this, either. We have had two murders in my hometown of Radelie Koe, Fort Good Hope, within the last four years.
This should tell us we really need to try to turn this around, in some kind of way.
As a third year PhD student at Trent University, in Peterborough Ont., I have also been entrusted to run a weekly sweat lodge ceremony. I've been told quite a number of times this has really been helping out some people.
There are a lot of teachings from our ancestors which come out in these kinds of healing activities.
Which is what we are really missing, to find ways to turn our violent lives around. Maybe even start with on-the-land healing centres in the North.
Mahsi, thank you.