They are the keepers of the flame for more than 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada

Sisters of Spirit shines a light on missing aboriginal women

Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service: Monday, October 26, 2009 3:52 PM

Strengthening the Spirit, a committee of service providers that works to meet the needs of Aboriginal people affected by domestic and sexual violence, hosted their annual conference on March 26, 2009. Speakers (left) Bernice Williams-Poitras, and (right) Gladys Radek shared stories of their own and others who have lost family and friends.

Photo Credit: Dean Bicknell, Calgary Herald

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They are the keepers of the flame for more than 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. And their crusade has become - for the moment, anyway - the whole country's crusade.

From a cramped, west-end Ottawa office decorated with dream catchers and infused with hope, the place where a great divide is bridged between hundreds of grieving communities across Canada and the powers that be on Parliament Hill, a small team of researchers and outreach workers is trying hard not to say: "We told you so."

But the people behind Sisters in Spirit, a five-year, federally funded initiative launched in 2005 by the Native Women's Association of Canada, have been saying all along what most Canadians are just now waking up to after a recent media blitz about murdered and missing women in Western Canada.

They've been telling Canadians that the dead and disappeared are almost everywhere across the country; that there is no single serial killer at work, except apathy; that the tragedy runs deep into the history of aboriginal dispossession and discrimination; that jurisdictional tangles and cultural blind spots help explain why so many killings and so many vanished women have been relegated to the cold-case file.

Among the startling statistics that Sisters in Spirit researchers have compiled - apart from the group's showcase figure of 520 missing or murdered Canadian aboriginal women since about 1970 - is that the toll would be equivalent to 18,000 dead or disappeared women from all ethnic groups for all of Canada.

The awareness of such facts is only dawning nationwide after a late-August splash of publicity about one of the 18 disappeared women along B.C.'s "Highway of Tears," and a coincident push by Manitoba police to re-energize a probe into the murders of two native women in Winnipeg.

The alarm blared again in early October when vigils were held across the country - including one on Parliament Hill - to remember the lost and to demand, yet again, more resources and more action to solve old cases and prevent new ones.

"We're dealing with a very marginalized, vulnerable community - I call it the cycle of distress," says Sisters in Spirit director Kate Rexe. "It's not just about violence. It's health issues, housing issues, economic security, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health, racism, and all of those social factors that create a situation of being marginalized or vulnerable."

The cruel irony, notes Rexe, is that it took renewed interest in the fate of the only white woman among the 18 who went missing along a lonely stretch of B.C.'s infamous Hwy. 16 - Red Deer student Nicole Hoar - to finally prompt broader questions and revelations about the national tragedy unfolding among Canada's native women.

Hoar's disappearance "put the Highway of Tears on the map," says Rexe, but the "17 other aboriginal women" were given footnote status.

And there's more cruel irony. Just when the message Sisters in Spirit has been spreading for years may finally be sinking in with politicians and Canadians in general, the project itself is facing a fight for survival - a potential victim of divided funding priorities.

Rexe and the eight other Sisters in Spirit employees at the Native Women's Association of Canada headquarters have applied for a fresh, five-year mandate and another $1-million-a-year funding promise from the current Conservative government. But they've been waiting months for federal approval of the project's next phase.

The funding commitment would match the original 2005 outlay made by Paul Martin's Liberal government and, says Sisters in Spirit, help the group sustain the momentum behind its research, prevention and publicity initiatives.

Those initiatives include tool kits - distributed to native communities throughout the country - to combat sexism, promote safety-conscious behaviour and generally help prevent violence against women.

But as a measure of the relentless sorrow gripping many aboriginal communities, another Sisters in Spirit tool kit offers grieving families advice on dealing with police and the media after a loved one has disappeared or been murdered.

"The best part about going to the communities is that we let them know this is a larger problem," says Sisters in Spirit outreach co-ordinator Jennifer Lord. "We go in as a third-party to say no, you're not alone. Trust me. Communities across the board are going through this. Urban, rural, aboriginal, non-aboriginal communities."

The driving force behind the creation of Sisters in Spirit, former Native Women's Association of Canada president Terri Brown, had been spurred by personal tragedy: the beating death of her own sister, Ada Elaine, in 2001.

"How many more of our sisters have to die before it matters?" she said at the time. "I guess people think, 'Just another dead Indian.' But she was our baby sister. She mattered to us."

In January 2008, Brown's successor - ex-Native Women's Association of Canada president Beverley Jacobs, who left the post in September - was also touched by a family tragedy. Her cousin, 21-year-old Tashina General from the Six Nations native community near Brantford, Ont., disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

At a police press conference to rally search efforts, Jacobs said: "I have been following stories like this for years, but this time I'm personally involved. I'd never thought it would ever affect me. We just want to know that she's safe."

But General wasn't safe. Her body, pregnant with the unborn son she'd planned to name Tucker, was found in the area that April.

Tashina General's biography is now part of a growing Sisters in Spirit library of heart-wrenching but inspiring "life stories" - published accounts of the achievements, qualities and unfulfilled promise of the lost.

The spectre of unfulfilled promise now haunts Sisters in Spirit itself.

The uncertainty about the group's future has arisen amid rumours that federal funding could be cut or dispersed more broadly - and less effectively, Rexe argues - among dozens of groups combating violence across the country.

Even further delays this fall before Sisters in Spirit's financial future is clarified means that the organization - even if funds finally come through next spring - "could potentially go for a year without funding and lose the continuity and staff and the knowledge," says Rexe. "We're in a very tricky position."

The government, so far, is providing expressions of support for the "great work" being done by Sisters in Spirit but no clear comment on the organization's fate as the end of its funding draws near.

The uncertainty has emerged despite the fact that Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis has repeatedly highlighted Sisters in Spirit's achievements to rebuff opposition charges that the Conservative government is doing too little to deal with Canada's epidemic of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Liberal MP Anita Neville, the party's critic on women's issues, has called for a national investigation into the high rate of missing and murdered native women, and for stronger measures from the "so-called tough-on-crime" Tory government to combat human trafficking - the suspected crime behind some cases of missing aboriginal women.

In response, Guergis has hailed Sisters in Spirit as "an example of a partnership that works to create tangible benefits" for aboriginal women.

"Sisters in Spirit aims at quantifying the actual number of missing and murdered women by understanding the root causes of racialized and sexualized violence, and by implementing a public awareness strategy," she said in August, acknowledging that the group's $5-million allocation runs out in 2010.

She expressed similar sentiments in response to the October vigils: "We absolutely support the great work that Sisters in Spirit has done," Guergis said.

Sisters in Spirit, created by a Liberal government and kept alive - so far - by Conservatives, maintains a decidedly non-partisan posture.

But its director persists in asking hard questions of investigators and all parties and governments - federal, provincial and territorial - when it comes to the disturbing numbers of missing and murdered native women that the group generates in its yearly reports.

"Has there been a bias of some sort against aboriginal women?" Rexe wonders. "Have there been gaps that have essentially ignored the red flags and the warning signs when a woman goes missing or has been murdered?"

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

‘I miss my daughter’

By Barb Pacholik, Regina Leader-Post

October 21, 2009

Patsy Favel disappeared from the lives of her mother and son on Sept. 30, 1984, four days after Cody’s first birthday.

Photograph by: Regina Leader-Post, Canwest News Service

REGINA — Time is fixed in the photo — an attractive, young mother proudly holding her infant in her arms.

Both are looking at the photographer, no small feat as any parent who has posed for photos with a wriggling infant knows. The mother has a sweet smile that heightens her cheekbones and carries through to her eyes. Her nine-month-old son clutches at the front of her blouse.

If only time had stood still at that joyous moment for Patsy Favel and her baby boy, Cody Blue Favel.

Twenty-five years later, other pictures overwhelm Patsy's mother, ugly images that creep into Alice Berger's thoughts during the day and interrupt her sleep at night. They are graphic images, of two men shooting her daughter in cold blood — a story she has heard about her daughter's fate.

Years ago, the images that filled Berger's dreams about her daughter were optimistic — that she was happy and healthy, a new start, a new life.

There's no telling if any of the dreams or nightmares or stories hold any truth. There's really no telling anything about Patsy. She disappeared from the lives of her mother and son on Sept. 30, 1984, four days after Cody's first birthday. Vanished.

The photos of Patsy with her son are the last ones of her.

Berger's memories of that time are fading with the years, but of one thing the 75-year-old is certain: "She was very, very proud of her boy." Berger later adds, "She just loved him."

A mother, a daughter, a sister — loving and loved and valued.

"I miss my daughter. Lots."

While Patsy Favel is Regina's oldest reported case of a missing woman, many other parents like Berger walk the line between hope and dread.

Across the province, the list of long-term missing women — gone six months or more — stretches to 29 names, five from this city and about one-third from the southern half of the province. While they are outnumbered by missing men more than two to one, the men are more often victims of misadventure, lives lost while boating, swimming, or hiking in the bush. Foul play is suspected in 70 per cent of the missing women's cases, but in only 21 per cent of the men's, according to a provincial report on missing persons.

In its report to the Provincial Partnership Committee on Missing Persons, the Saskatchewan First Nations Women's Commission Secretariat noted that aboriginal females are going missing at a disproportionate rate. Of Saskatchewan's missing women, 12 are Caucasian and 17 aboriginal. Aboriginal people make up only 14 per cent of Saskatchewan's population.

"Higher-risk lifestyles, transitions from reserve to urban without a strong support system, lack of proper transportation — such as hitchhiking from a reserve to urban centre — all contribute to risks that a person may or may not go missing," says the secretariat's report.

"By identifying that some First Nation women may go missing because of who they are, a stronger response can be put in place if a person is thought to be missing," it adds.

In recent years, there's been far more attention on missing persons, with the creation of special police units, committees, and awareness campaigns. Berger admits she's angry that focus was absent when her daughter vanished.

"Now it's too late. Why didn't they do that right away when a person goes missing?" she asks.

"Darn it, why do they leave us behind? Why don't they do something to help with our children?" she asks.

Berger and her husband of 40 years live in a tidy little house — they won a contest for their yard with its flower baskets and trimmed lawn this summer — on the Piapot First Nation, where her youngest brother is the chief, she notes with pride.

Walls of her home are given over to photos of her children, grandchildren and what she affectionately refers to as her "greats" — great, and great-great-grandchildren. There is one picture, slightly out of focus, of a very slender Patsy smiling beside a Christmas tree — the last Christmas with her family.

Patricia Maye Favel, who would be 43 today, is the youngest of Berger's six children. "When I wanted to baby her, I called her Pa-a-tsy," says her mother, dragging out the syllables.

Her mother remembers a quiet girl who enjoyed reading while growing up on Kawacatoose First Nation. "I thought she was going to be a quiet girl the rest of her life."

Patsy was close to her sister, Maxine, a few years older. By age 18 and then living in Regina, Patsy had followed her sister into a lifestyle that reduces their mother to tears even today. Both were addicted to what was the favoured street drug in 1980s Regina — "poor man's heroin," a mix of the prescription pills Talwin and Ritalin. Patsy occasionally found the cash to support her habit on what was then dubbed the "low stroll," a few downtown blocks where mostly poor, aboriginal women sold their bodies to buy drugs, and bought drugs to dull the reality of selling their bodies.

"I tried to stop her, talk to her. We tried everything," says Berger. "Once you get hooked on something like that, it's hard to quit." At five-foot-seven, Patsy had dwindled to 45 kilograms.

When Berger hadn't seen Patsy for a few days, she went looking for her at Maxine's apartment. She spotted Patsy in her brown 1975 Camaro, but her daughter waved her off, as if she didn't want her to come near.

"That was the last time I seen her," says Berger.

Later that Sunday, around 10:30 p.m., Patsy, who had bleached her curly, dark hair blonde a week before, stood two blocks from the Regina police station. According to witnesses who talked to police after family reported her missing on Oct. 2, she had been seen that Sept. 30 night getting into a smaller, red or orange, Japanese-made car, possibly a Datsun or Toyota, driven by a man.

A woman who was also working that night told the Leader-Post in 1984 that she was approached by an Asian man driving such a car. She recalled a Chinese pagoda hanging in the window. When that woman turned him away, he headed towards the street where Patsy was waiting. Like so many other things about the case, there's no way to know if it's true. "It's possible, but it's nothing certain," police said back then.

Even today, the cold case detective in charge of the file can't rule out anything, including a possible link to another mystery. Nearly a year before Patsy vanished, 19-year-old Annette Kelly Peigan disappeared from the downtown on July 29, 1983. Badly burned remains, found three weeks later in a ditch on the city's eastern edge, were subsequently linked to her. It was impossible to determine a cause of death, and Peigan is among the RCMP's cold cases.

After realizing her daughter was gone without any explanation, Berger and her husband searched alleys, drove streets, picked through garbage cans, and consulted with an elder who had a vision of Patsy — all to no avail. Berger believes police could have done more.

Tears glisten on her cheeks as she speaks about the disturbing story she heard a few years ago, that Patsy was taken and killed by two men in the street wars over drugs, prostitution and turf.

"That shot wasn't meant for her. . . . They mistook her as Maxine," she says, relating the tale she heard second-hand. Clearly, Berger fears there may be some truth to it, as she weeps and is comforted by her husband.

"That was the last story I ever heard about Patsy."

Today Maxine is also missed, dead from her addiction, while her sister Patsy is just missing. A victim of a bad date or street violence? Drifted away from a life she didn't want? Alive or dead? Not knowing is the hardest part, says Berger.

"I still have hopes for her coming back. I hope they find her some day."

Patsy's baby boy, Cody, is now a man of 26. Berger cared for her grandson for a time after Patsy disappeared until the child never returned home from a visit to his paternal family. He did keep in touch over the years, and Berger did her best to keep the mother he never knew alive, telling him, "she loved you."

As a young man, Cody found another family, the Native Syndicate street gang, and paid dearly for its acceptance. In December 2006 the then 23-year-old was shot in the upper left chest and lost a lung as punishment for failing to obey the gang.

Despite the risks, Cody testified last year against the men responsible. By then, he was looking to turn his life around.

Like Patsy, Cody too may disappear from Berger's life. At the time of his testimony last year, he spoke of entering a witness protection program.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Letter to a monster. Hello Willie.

Ethan Baron, The Province Published: Friday, June 26, 2009

Hello, Willie.

I know you're reading this, because it's all about you.

Just like the trial.

After four years of working on your story, after sitting in that courtroom for months on end, watching you through bullet-proof glass, I know you far better than I'd like to.

For these four years, you have been an unwelcome guest in my world.

You have strewn my dreams with carnage, gruesome castoffs from your world of suffering, dismemberment and death.

I dream of killing. I dream of watching people die.

Once, I even dreamed of you.

We were in a room together. I don't know why. And, in my nightmare, I was overcome by fear, not that you'd suddenly attack me - I'm bigger and smarter than you - but that I would fall asleep, and would wake to feel your strange, monkey fingers around my neck.

I felt, for the first time, what every female who is familiar with your case felt from the very outset: the fear every woman lives with everyday, of crossing paths with someone like you.

A remorseless killer.

I do not hold you responsible. You are a biological aberration, an obscenity of nature.

Remember the story you told that undercover cop in jail, that you killed 49 people? I do.

Sometimes, sitting through those endless hours of testimony about which DNA swab was used on which wall in your slaughterhouse, and which sock was found in which bag in your filthy trailer, I used to think about killing you.

It wasn't that I actually wanted to, or even thought you deserved it. I would sit and examine the courtroom security procedures in place for your protection, and my mind would wander. I figured that, if I sat in the gallery seat closest to the doorway for the courtroom, I could rush through the door when a witness went in, before one of the burly, ever-vigilant sheriffs could grab me.

I would have been in front of you in a flash, my hands around your throat, squeezing. The sheriffs in the courtroom didn't carry guns, but I concluded that those who did, in the gallery, would be through the door as I began to throttle you. Friendly as they were, they were serious about their job, and I have no doubt they would have shot me before your life expired.

It was fun to think about, though.

I remember thinking once, after some particularly gruesome evidence came before the court, that it was interesting that this stuff didn't seem to disturb my mind. Then I got up at a break, and realized I felt nauseous almost to the point of vomiting.

I never cried, except for once, on the day you were sentenced, when the Crown read a statement from Brenda Wolfe's mother. She'd written that if all the tears she'd shed made a path to heaven, she would walk along it and bring her daughter home.

You might not remember that part.

I have to admit there was a lot of laughter, too. We all got a kick out of your attachment to your late horse, Goldie, especially when we found out that, when you'd taken her head to the taxidermist, you rode the bus.

I hope you're not upset they wouldn't let you have Goldie's head in your jail cell. Institutional authorities can be so cruel.

I'm not supposed to talk about the plasticine figurines some of us made during the trial, but I can tell you I have my version of your pig-butchering buddy Pat Casanova sitting on my desk. You'd get a chuckle out of how his thumb is covering up that cancer-surgery hole in his throat. I can send it to you if you want. I'm not that attached to it.

You're more clever than you look, I'll give you that. You knew enough to prey on people who wouldn't be immediately missed, women of such low social status that the police wouldn't pay attention when they started to vanish. And you even let some go free, so they could tell people Willie Pickton wasn't the reason so many women were going away and never coming back.

You got sloppy at the end, you admitted that. When the police came to your farm, they found a little snapshot of your process.

Heads, hands and feet in buckets. A jawbone in the pig manure. You had it all down to a routine, didn't you?

And what you didn't dispose of at the farm went to the rendering plant. That driver from the plant testified that he'd pick up barrels of burnt-black chunks of meat from your farm.

Did you just pour gas into barrels of human remains and set them on fire, so the pieces of people wouldn't look like pieces of people?

You will be remembered as an awful human being, worse than worthless.

Still, you have one shot at redemption, Willie, one chance to be seen in a different light.

You can come clean.

Forget about any appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

You need to tell the world what you did, and why.

You can go down in history as a nasty bit of human trash.

Or you can have the last word, and be forever remembered as a terrible monster who, in the end, did the right thing. It would be - almost - heroic.

Do you have the courage, Willie? Do you have the strength?

Maybe.

Do you have the humanity?

I don't think so.

ebaron@theprovince.com

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1735663

Body found, linked online to missing teen Poorman

By ANNE KYLE and JOE COUTURE, Leader-Post; with files from Barb Pacholik
April 20, 2009 8:2

REGINA — Police have not yet publicly identified the remains of a body found on Friday about half a block from where Tara-Lyn Poorman disappeared from a birthday party more than four months ago.

But on pages of social networking sites set up to promote the search for the missing 17-year-old, family and friends left posts over the weekend making a connection between the teen and the grisly discovery, and expressing hopes she will "rest in peace."

The creator of a Facebook group called "Finding Tara-Lyn Poorman," who identified himself as her brother Vance Kay, wrote "itz true she iz gone," along with an "RIP" for his "baby sis."

Similar posts were also available publicly on Twitter and Bebo pages.

Reached late on Sunday, Poorman's mother Shellyn Kay told the Leader-Post she had not received any official news and did not want to comment further.

Kay said she "didn't know what was going on" with the social website posts, adding she had not spoken to Vance.

Calls to others in Poorman's family and those who have spoken publicly about her disappearance in the past were not returned over the weekend.

Poorman was last seen at a residence in the 400 block of Halifax Street in December.

Police and her family have both offered rewards for her return.

The decomposing body of a woman was found Friday in the 300 block of Osler Street.

The body is believed to have been at a location in a yard in that area, hidden under a pile of snow, for some time, according to the Regina Police Service.

"We are continuing our investigation into a suspicious death in conjunction with the Office of the Chief Coroner,'' police spokeswoman Elizabeth Popowich told the Leader-Post Saturday.

Popowich said police were dispatched to the rear of the backyard of an Osler Street house just before 7:45 p.m. on Friday after receiving information of a person injured or deceased.

Police and emergency medical services attended the area and confirmed that an unidentified woman found in the backyard was deceased.

"Patrol members secured the area and requested members of the forensic identifications and major crimes units to attend,'' Popowich said, explaining investigators were at the scene for most of Saturday and will continue to secure the area as a crime scene until police have more information as to the cause and manner of the woman's death.

"We are continuing that investigation," she said. "It is being considered a suspicious death and the coroner will order any post-mortem procedures requested. We are also in the process of confirming the identity of the deceased, and once that is confirmed, we will then will notify the woman's family.''

Investigators have said it appears the deceased body was at that location for some time and for that reason identifying the deceased will take some time, Popowich said, noting that won't likely happen until after the weekend.

"In the province of Saskatchewan, we know there are many families who have a missing person in their family," Popowich said on Saturday. "So the discovery of a deceased person before an identity is confirmed must start an agonizing period of waiting for all of those families and it is very, very difficult.

"We can't speculate on the identify of the deceased," continued Popowich, who refused to comment Sunday on the social website postings about Poorman.

"We have to know it through fact and we have to confirm it. As difficult as it is for people to wait for those answers, it is our duty to deal in fact," she said.

akyle@leaderpost.canwest.com

jcouture@leaderpost.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Regina Leader-Post