On March 13, I received some devastating news. My niece passed away at 28, leaving behind her 11-year-old daughter and eight-month-old son.
For the last two weeks, we, as a family, have tried to come to terms with this tragic and senseless loss.
No sense can be made. Not one single iota of logic can be made of this.
No matter how often we, as Indigenous People, tell our stories and call out the wrongs that continue to happen to our women and us, these preventable deaths keep happening.
My niece’s name was Melissa, but we called her Missy. Her six siblings – Daniel, Charleana, David, Anna Mae, Lizzie, and Justin – are bearing this loss and are scared for each other, too; if it could happen to Missy, it could happen to them.
What happened, you ask?
Cries for help unheeded. Left alone to deal with her demons, the very institution she worked for took her children. The cops took her dog. Both took her dignity and left her by herself, where she literally just laid down in her bed and died. I think she died from a broken heart.
We may never know the exact cause of death – they are not fast-tracking her toxicology reports, nor did they provide a timely autopsy – lengthening our suffering even more.
Never mind that there is currently funding, hundreds of thousands of dollars, supposedly put into place to prevent such a tragedy from happening. Put into the Indigenous organizations that are supposed to accompany the police on wellness checks, the organizations that are supposed to be reaching out to these lost souls who suffer in solitary silence.
Three – yes, three – wellness check calls were made about Missy, given that she was succumbed by uncontrollable manic behaviour.
The last one is when they found her.
Why, in the name of everything holy, did they just walk away and leave her to die?
Why did the social media posts she put out there, literally screaming for help, only receive negative, derogatory remarks from those sickos who watched her trauma unfold practically live?
What are we going to do about this?
What are you going to do about this?
Shrug your shoulders, say I’m sorry for your loss, and head back to your life, forgetting Missy and all the others who have experienced this kind of tragedy.
Better yet, notice them.
Notice us.
Bring your voices to the table and demand justice. This has got to stop.
No More Stolen Sisters!
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Cory Bilyea is an Indigenous journalist currently working for Midwestern Newspapers. She is a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, better known as Onkwehonwe, the original people. Cory is a survivor of intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools. She can be reached at cbilyea@midwesternnewspapers.com.
