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Todd Aalgaard on another suspicious death of an indigenous woman

Is there another addition to that terrible list on the No More Silence website, the one that records the murders and disappearances of Ontario’s indigenous women?

On Sunday, July 28, supporters of No More Silence gathered at 21 Iceboat Terrace to lay down tobacco and light candles in a spirit release ceremony for Bella Laboucan-McLean. The young woman from the Sturgeon Lake Cree First Nation, 350 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, was found dead July 20, having fallen 31 storeys from a Queens Quay condo she was visiting. She had just wrapped up her undergrad studies at Humber’s fashion arts program.

Her death has galvanized aboriginal activists who have long pointed to the nightmare experienced by First Nations women as disproportionate victims of violence in crimes that are sometimes under-investigated by police.

In the last few months, two other First Nations women in their 20s have died in Toronto in mysterious circumstances: Cheyenne Fox from Sheguiandah First Nation fell from a 24-storey condo in Don Mills in April, and her family is demanding an inquest. The following month, Terra Gardner was killed by a freight train near Yonge and Summerhill. She had recently been compelled to testify in an upcoming murder trial and had complained about death threats. Police ruled out foul play.

In Laboucan-McLean’s case, police believe six witnesses present in the condo know what happened but aren’t speaking, perhaps out of fear. All police spokesperson Wendy Drummond will says is that “the investigation regarding Bella’s death is ongoing.”

“Bella was an absolutely beautiful individual, inside and out,” Holly Dean, a close friend of hers, tells NOW. The idea that she could have been responsible for her own death, she says, is so alien to Bella’s character as to be absurd.

“She would never do anything to intentionally hurt herself,” she says. That, says Dean, leaves only one option. “We are all praying [that] whoever did this to Bella is caught or comes forth, for Bella and for her family.”

For No More Silence activist Audrey Huntley, the Laboucan-McLean tragedy, like many others, is a reflection of the way Canada has failed its First Peoples. The only way to get to the bottom of this national epidemic is an inquiry on violence against First Nation women. “We have no faith in the Canadian government,” Huntley says, “and want the inquiry to include the active involvement of indigenous women on the ground.”

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, she points out, will be sending special rapporteurs to Canada this summer and fall – part of an international intervention long requested by grassroots activists and also requiring the input of First Nation women leaders.

The most important way to memorialize Laboucan-McLean, Huntley says, is by accelerating the pursuit of justice. “No More Silence has been honouring the women who have passed in Ontario for eight years with a ceremony at Toronto police headquarters,” she says. That, symbolically, will remain ground zero.

news@nowtoronto.com

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