Another flower is uprooted
CBC News - New Brunswick - Dental records confirm body is missing N.B. teen
This makes me so sad, and desolate. Another indigenous flower, cut down before she could finish blooming.
I can't help but fear for the safety of my own child. She's 13, a newly minted teenager, bright, bold and beautiful, another in a long line of strong Haudenosaunee women, a rock'n'roll rebel girl who dresses in black and likes loud guitar rock. She's already evincing that serious Mohawk badass attitude. And the thought that her ancestry makes it four times more likely that she will be victimized somehow makes me shudder in fear. Intellectually I know that it's the same odds as a plane falling out of the sky on top of her, but emotionally I can't help this fear. And this fear is shared by indigenous mothers everywhere. Our daughters, our precious flowers, the rich resource of our people, are four more times likely than white girls to be raped, to be beaten, to be abducted and murdered. It is dangerous to be an indigenous woman, even more dangerous to be between the age of 10 and 28.
I hate this postcolonial reality more than I can say. It terrifies me and enrages me. And so I pretend that it won't happen, that it can't happen, and that it will happen to someone else. And I'm sure that there are five hundred and twenty-one other mothers who thought the same thing.
I will whisper a condolence for Hillary Bonnell, and hope with everything in me that her killer is brought to justice, and we will know why she had to die.
This makes me so sad, and desolate. Another indigenous flower, cut down before she could finish blooming.
I can't help but fear for the safety of my own child. She's 13, a newly minted teenager, bright, bold and beautiful, another in a long line of strong Haudenosaunee women, a rock'n'roll rebel girl who dresses in black and likes loud guitar rock. She's already evincing that serious Mohawk badass attitude. And the thought that her ancestry makes it four times more likely that she will be victimized somehow makes me shudder in fear. Intellectually I know that it's the same odds as a plane falling out of the sky on top of her, but emotionally I can't help this fear. And this fear is shared by indigenous mothers everywhere. Our daughters, our precious flowers, the rich resource of our people, are four more times likely than white girls to be raped, to be beaten, to be abducted and murdered. It is dangerous to be an indigenous woman, even more dangerous to be between the age of 10 and 28.
I hate this postcolonial reality more than I can say. It terrifies me and enrages me. And so I pretend that it won't happen, that it can't happen, and that it will happen to someone else. And I'm sure that there are five hundred and twenty-one other mothers who thought the same thing.
I will whisper a condolence for Hillary Bonnell, and hope with everything in me that her killer is brought to justice, and we will know why she had to die.
