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When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali
CLICK HERE ON HOW TO READ
ALL PARTS OF THIS SPECIAL
<The stench of death>
<Canada's indigenous murdered women and girls.>
Between 8 Nov 2021 and 17 Feb 2022 AL Jazeera published a serial of
articles about femicides of Canadian Indigenous women and girls of which each word is so
heartbreaking that it takes a lot of courage to read the whole serial. Still I challenge you to do so! I divided it according to the
number of articles and quoted from them ending with a read more URL. All
articles were written by Brandi Morin (1 to 10) except the last one
(11th.) written by an Al Jazeera team:
Related:
Hunted
29 Nov 2021
<<....In 1971, Jean Virginia Sampare, or Ginny as her family called her,
was a typical 18-year-old; the second-eldest of six siblings. The shy
but strong-willed teenager lived in Gitsegukla, a Gitxsan reserve of
about 500 people that sits at the confluence of the Kitseguecla and
Skeena rivers - and parallel to Highway 16. On the evening of October
14, 1971, Jean was hanging out with her cousin Alvin near a bridge on
Highway 16, just outside Gitsegukla. It was a cool autumn evening, so
Alvin rode his bicycle back to his home a few minutes away in the
reserve to get his jacket. He told Jean he wouldn’t be long. But when he
returned, Jean was gone. She hasn't been seen for over 50 years. Her
sister Winnie Sampare told the Vancouver Sun in a 2009 interview, <It
was just so strange how she disappeared. Everyone looked and they didn’t
find anything.> Jean is one of dozens of women and girls, mostly
Indigenous, who have vanished or been found murdered on or near Highway
16, earning it the moniker the Highway of Tears. Her missing person’s
case has never been solved and she is not listed among the missing or
murdered women on the Highway of Tear’s Project E-Pana, which is the
investigative unit of the RCMP in charge of solving the cases of 18
girls and women who disappeared or were found murdered along the Highway
of Tears since the late 1950s. She meets most of the criteria required
for an unsolved case to be put on the official E-Pana list: she is
female and was last seen within a mile of the highway. But foul play
must also be confirmed, which police have been unable to do in Jean’s
case. Jean’s story and the many others like it were what inspired Cindy
Martin, a Gitxsan woman, to become a passionate advocate for Missing and
Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). For years she participated
in annual marches to raise awareness about the issue in Vancouver, where
she worked in an Indigenous mentoring programme and as a student
advocate with Indigenous youth in the school system. She dreamed of one
day opening a counselling centre to help Indigenous families heal from
the many consequences of colonialism, including the violence inflicted
upon Indigenous women and girls along the Highway of Tears.Then she too
went missing.
It was December 2018 - two days before Christmas - when 50-year-old
Cindy left her mother’s house in New Hazelton, where she had been living
since recently breaking up with her boyfriend. She had been helping her
mother, 83-year-old Mae Martin, and older sister Faye prepare for the
holidays. <Cindy loved Christmas,> recalls another of her sisters,
58-year-old social worker Sheridan Martin, who has driven an hour and a
half from her home in Terrace to a restaurant in Smithers to talk about
Cindy. <She’d make handmade wooden gifts, suncatchers and cards,> she
says over a cup of coffee.
Cindy was the baby of the family, Sheridan explains as tears form in her
eyes. <So many hearts were broken,> she adds. Then she looks down, lifts
her hand to her heart and her tears begin to fall. ............
For a time she believed Cindy was still alive, she explains, gripping
her no-longer warm mug and swallowing the last few sips of coffee. Maybe
she was a victim of kidnapping and sex trafficking and was still out
there fighting for her life, she thought. But as more time passed, those
hopes began to fade.<I worry she was tortured,> she says, crying. <I
don’t believe she’s alive anymore … I have dreams of her in the spirit
world. She’s laughing … beautiful.> Sheridan smiles, a flicker of hope
that briefly co-exists with her tears. She has lost faith in Canada’s
national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG);
its final report with Calls to Justice, released in June 2019, has to
date produced no action.
<The inquiry is a joke; it was just lip service. Nobody is going to come
help us,” she says, gripping tightly onto the side of the wooden table
she is sitting at.
<You know, Cindy was not just another statistic, she was a human being,
a breathing, alive human being.> >>
Read the whole article here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2021/11/29/hunted-how-indigenous-women-are-disappearing-in-canada
23 Dec 2021
<<A 'lingering evil'
From residential schools to murdered women.
British Columbia, Canada - Fifty-seven-year-old Mary Nikal flops down
onto a blue Chesterfield couch. Her scruffy miniature black poodle sits
at her feet. Mary is exhausted. She has given countless interviews to
the press over the past 30 years, but they still don’t get any easier.
Her hair - dyed a warm caramel brown - is tied back in a low ponytail,
her bangs - with their strands of grey - frame hazel eyes, similar to
those of her little sister, Delphine. Delphine’s pictures are displayed
on a nearby table, illuminated by candlelight.
She was 16 years old when she disappeared in 1990 - one of three members
of the Nikal family to have vanished; all of them under 20, all of them
female. Less than a year before Delphine disappeared, her 15-year-old
cousin Cecilia Nikal went missing from Vancouver. A year before that, in
1988, another cousin, 19-year-old Roberta Nikal, disappeared near the
city of Surrey in British Columbia. “She wasn’t a runaway,” says Mary of
Delphine as rays from the setting sun settle upon the houseplants that
line the windows of her mobile home on an acreage near the town of
Hazelton. <I was thinking the worst for years … She was either in the
river, someone beat her and raped her. Someone overpowered her because
she was pretty strong,> she says, forming a fist. Delphine was the
youngest of five siblings. Her Dutch father was 49 when he met and
married her Wet’suewet’en mother, who was just 17 at the time. But they
had a good life, Mary says.The family lived a few kilometres outside of
Smithers, on a farm surrounded by snowcapped mountains. They kept pigs,
chickens, goats, cows, horses and dogs. Delphine had a deep affection
for animals, Mary says, and an attraction to mischief. <One time when
Delphine was three, we lost her. We were looking all over and dad found
her sitting in the garden eating strawberries. Her mouth was stained
red,> Mary chuckles, adding that Delphine’s nickname was ‘baby’.
Delphine was exceptionally close to her father who liked to spoil her,
says Mary. It was their mother, Judy Nikal, who enforced the rules,
handing out chores to the children. Mary attributes her mother’s
sternness to the fact she was a residential school survivor.
The notoriously abusive state- and Church-run schools - to which
Indigenous parents were forced to send their children under threat of
arrest - unleashed the sort of trauma that would be passed on through
the generations. Judy attended Lejac residential school. It operated
from 1922 to 1976 and was run by the Roman Catholic Church with the aim
of forcing Indigenous children to assimilate into settler culture while
forcibly removing them from their own culture, communities and families.
Abuse of all kinds was rampant, but there was one story, in particular,
that came to define Lejac in the minds of many Indigenous people. In
1937, four young boys ran away from the school, but before they could
make it home, they froze to death on a nearby lake. <Mom went through a
lot of pain and suffering she never dealt with,> says Mary, her eyes
distant and filled with tears.
............'If Delphine had blonde hair and blue eyes'. The night she
disappeared - June 13, 1990 - she had been hanging out with friends in
Smithers and reportedly planned to hitchhike back home to Telkwa, which
was 15km (9 miles) away. It was a common thing to do, Mary explains, as
public transportation between the small towns and reserves that line
Highway 16 was - and still is - limited. But, two days later, Mary got a
call from her uncle telling her Delphine never made it home. Her friends
had last seen her getting into a vehicle near a gas station in Smithers.
Mary, then 26 years old, immediately went to look for her sister. She
turned to the Smithers detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
to ask for help but says she didn’t get any. <The cops wouldn’t listen
to us; they weren’t very concerned at all. We basically got the doors
slammed in our face,> she says, her cheeks turning red with anger.>>
Read the whole article here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2021/12/23/a-lingering-evil-from-residential-schools-to-murdered-women
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