SiSterS in Spirit

On December 10, 2006, Kelly Morrisseau was found stabbed and clinging to life in a parking lot near Gatineau Park. One year after her cousins brutal murder, Roxanne Morrisseau shares her memories of growing up with Kelly in Winnipegs notorious North End, their decision to seek a better life in Ottawa, and the pain of still not knowing how Kelly spent her final days or who killed her
by rob thomas

On a cOOl late-fall mOrning, Roxanne Morrisseau lines up at the coffee counter on the lower floor of the Terrasses de la Chaudire government complex in Gatineau and orders a crme caramel coffee. Crme caramel is Roxannes favourite. Unfortunately, theres none brewed at the moment. Youre the only one who drinks it, the woman behind the counter explains. Then she tells Roxanne to hold on while she brews a new batch especially for her. Thank you so much, Roxanne says. Youve made my day. She gives a broad smile before adding, It doesnt take much. this day is especially hard for Roxanne, who has agreed to meet to reflect back on the short life and brutal death of her cousin, Kelly Morrisseau, who died one year ago. On a cold December morning in 2006, in a parking lot on the fringe of Gatineau Park, a man walking his dog found a young woman clinging to life in a pool of blood. Kelly Morrisseau, just 27 and seven months pregnant, had been stripped naked and stabbed more than a dozen times. Though too weak to speak, she was still conscious when police and ambulance arrived. She was rushed to hospital but had lost too much blood and died soon after. Roxanne says she thinks about her cousin every morning as she crosses the Ottawa River on her way to work. Its a painful daily ritual, and today was particularly difficult. I work, and Im a full-time mom on the weekends, so I sort of hide my
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pain. I hide my tears. But every once in a while, I feel like I cant deal with it, I cant take it, and I just break down, Roxanne explains. Today was one of those days. Coming in on the bus this morning, I couldnt stop thinking about the cold weather and thinking about Kellys last moments. I look at the Gatineau sign, and I just start thinking too much. Roxanne speaks quietly, glancing around to make sure none of her co-workers are nearby. For three years, she has been an entitlement officer with Indian Affairs. Wearing conservative dark slacks and a blouse, her long dark hair pulled back, and the inevitable pass card on a cord around her neck, she looks like any other civil servant in the hulking government complex. Her life now is far removed from the troubled streets of Winnipegs notorious North End, where she grew up in the developments surrounded by poverty, addiction, and native gangs. Her friends and colleagues today dont know about my past, she says. A lot of people here probably think things were handed to me, but they werent. It was a struggle and 0.0001 per cent makes it through. I was lucky. She says the brutality of Kellys murder has left her family badly shaken and brought back painful memories of another death 16 years ago. Kellys aunt, Glenda Morrisseau, was 19 years old when her partly clothed body was discovered in a secluded industrial area in Winnipeg. Her face had been
photography: suzAnne bird

badly disfigured. They found her on my 11th birthday, says Roxanne in a soft voice. It was so hard for me, because I looked up to her and loved her. She was the person that I loved most in the world. I never thought that I would lose her, and I did. And I never thought that I would ever go through anything that traumatic ever againand I did. it seems shOcking that one family could have lost two women in such violent ways. But Beverley Jacobs, president of the Native Womens Association of Canada, has seen so much of this kind of grief that shes not surprised. The association estimates that as many as 500 women have disappeared or died violently in the past 20 years. And they arent alone in raising those concerns. A 2004 report by Amnesty International outlines the factors that have pushed so many aboriginal women to the fringes of Canadian society, making them vulnerable to violence and murder. Those factors include poverty, discrimination, and government policies

Field of dreams: though this portrait of her was taken in ottawa, roxanne morrisseau said the long grass reminded her of the prairie fields she and her cousin Kelly played in when they were young

that disenfranchised native women and separated native children from their families. Jacobs cites a similar list and calls it the effects of colonization. These are issues that Roxanne Morrisseau knows all too well. She says most of the people she grew up around in Winnipeg succumbed to the sense of hopelessness that pervades many native communities. Theres an extreme lack of education. And there are a lot of people that are so stuck on drugs and alcohol that their children are not being cared for in an appropriate way. It just goes on and on, over and over, she explains. It seems there is nowhere for you to turn. Nowhere for you to look. You dont know what to do with yourself. You dont know how to better things when everything around you is so messed up. You feel helpless and hopeless. And you get used to it.
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thats the kind Of life Roxanne and Kelly Morrisseau When it came time to go to college, it was a choice of who sought to escape. In 1995, scared of the violence on their was going and who would stay home and watch the kids, doorsteps and determined to shield their baby daughters Roxanne explains haltingly. I dont know if it was selfish at from it, the two teens bought bus tickets and fled to Ottawa, the time, but she looked after my daughters while I was in moving into a two-bedroom apartment in Vanier. Roxanne school. She helped me. During those years when Roxanne was 16. Kelly was 17. The catalyst for their sudden departure was making her way through college and Kelly was babysitwas the death of a mutual friend. Eighteen-year-old Terry ting, Kelly gave birth to two more children, both sons. Acoby had been brutally beaten to death with a baseball bat. Reports in the Winnipeg newspapers described Acoby as a By 2005, the twO wOmens lives had begun to move gang member, something Roxanne vehemently denies. He in dramatically different directions. Roxanne graduated was a good boy, and it hurt his mother from college and found work with a so much to read that, she remembers, federal halfway house before moving to noting that in her neighbourhood, just her current job at Indian Affairs. Busy talking to someone who lived on the with a full-time job and her two young wrong street could lead to a beating. daughters, she began to see her cousin Though they didnt have much choice, less often. in retrospect Roxanne says Vanier wasnt Its hard to say exactly what was the best place for the two teens to sethappening in Kellys life around the tle. Coming to Ottawa, it was so differsame time. Family members who were ent that I didnt know I was immersing closer to Kelly than Roxanne was at this myself in a bad neighbourhood, she says. juncture are reluctant to say. And it In fact, compared to where I came from, seems clear that Kelly took care to hide Vanier seemed like a childs playground to her increasingly troubled life from famme. I didnt see what it was becoming. ily and friends who might have helped Delores Peltier sees such teenage her. It was around that she We were always together began to use crackthat time and was mothers on the run all too often. Shes a cocaine back then, and I was tenant-relations officer with Gignul Nonalways the rough, tough charged with assaulting her long-time Profit Housing Corporation, an Ottawa boyfriend, Michael Giroux, with a knife. one, pushing my way company that provides affordable housIn December 2005, Kellys three chilthrough things. Now I ing to aboriginal people. More than half from her. think of her as the strong dren were takenshe knew nothing about the companys tenants are single mothRoxanne says one, because she went out her cousins drug use. She never would ers; at different times, both Kelly and like a soldier Roxanne lived in Gignul housing. have shown me that. Its not something ROxaNNE MORRIssEau, cENtRE, Most of the women who come to the she would have been proud of. I know I WIth hER cOusIN KElly, RIGht, at aROuND city are trying to get away from things, can say that Ive never seen her use it. aGE thREE IN baNaNa PaRK, WINNIPEG trying to lead a better life, Peltier And I cant imagine her doing that. explains. A lot of the time, they find that Kellys sister, Farris Morrisseau, says they face new challenges here. When they get to the city, they though Kelly tried to hide her struggles with addiction from need to think about where they have to live and what kind even immediate family, her troubles became impossible to hide of support is available for them. Inexperienced youngsters once her children were taken away. She had her kids, and they face many problemssome new and some (depressingly) the were what made her happy, Farris says. When she lost her very ones they had hoped to escape. To keep rents afford- kids, she really got worse. She would cry for her kids. able, just over half of the companys 173 rental units are in That kind of situation is one of the biggest challenges for Vanier, a district where many of the citys crack houses are Childrens Aid, says Deborah Chansonneuve. An active memsituated and that contains well-known pockets where street ber of the aboriginal community, she has studied cultural and prostitutes work. family violence issues for many years. For their own safety, But Roxanne tried to hang tough. Though she had left children must be removed from homes of addiction or vioWinnipeg with only a Grade 9 education, over the next few lence, and yet the effect of the removal is often devastating years, she hit the books, attending Rideau High School. for the single mother. Its profoundly traumatizing to have She gave birth to her second daughter at the age of 20 but someone take away your children and to have no idea when or persevered and graduated with her high-school diploma if theyll be returned, she says. When a parent is vulnerable two years later in 2001. Its embarrassing, she says. That to addiction, the relationship with the children is often one of wasnt that long ago. their few strengths. If thats taken away, you also take away From there, she headed to Algonquin College, completing the that sense of purpose, the ability to work on the problem. correctional-worker program and a general arts-and-science Initially, though, Kelly seemed to muster the will to get her diploma in aboriginal studies. She admits that it was a real life back on track. Farris Morrisseau invited her sister to join struggle and speaks with pride of her success. I was stubborn her in Winnipeg, where she says Kelly seemed to kick her drug and very determined, she says. If somebody said no to me, Id habit. She put on weight, and they looked for work together. try to find a way to turn it into a yes. Still, she says, she couldnt Six months later, Kelly had to return to Ottawa to plead guilty have done it without help, particularly from her cousin Kelly. to assaulting her boyfriend. She told Farris that while she was
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there, she planned to fight to get her kids back. It was back in Ottawa that Kelly seems to have drifted quickly back into the street life of Vanier. She had no fixed address and just stayed with friends, her mother, or Girouxs mother. Nobody really knew where she was. Worse, she started to do drugs again. Police have said that Kelly was associated with drugs and prostitution and that the latter may have played a role in her death. Reflecting today on her cousins life at this low point shortly before her death, Roxanne Morrisseau thinks back to the generations of damage that disrupted so many native families. She sees women like Kelly as victims of the lingering trauma of residential schools, which undermined childrens cultural roots and family connections. (They were forced to speak only English, so Roxanne has only vague and distant memories of hearing Ojibway spoken. I cant even speak my own native language, she says.) And at their worst, the schools were sites of systematic violence and abusea fact that both Roxannes and Kellys mothers are only now coming to terms with. They were beaten and badly abused, in more ways than you can imagine, Roxanne says. So they never had the opportunity to learn how to be parents. To learn how to show affection. They were badly abused. They were beaten and tortured. Understanding this has helped her come to terms with the defects of her own upbringing. It makes me love my mom, my whole family, all the more because of the abuse they endured. I know theyre very strong people, because theyre still here, Roxanne says, adding that their pasts have made it impossible for her mother and aunt to claw their way out of poverty the way she has. You cant take an innocent child and immerse them in a totally bad environment and expect them to make it.

One year after Kelly Morrisseaus death, Roxanne says she still finds it hard to reconcile her family memories of Kelly with the way her life turned out and the way it ended. She remembers her cousin as a loving mother, someone who sacrificed herself for others and greeted every situation with a smile. We were always together back then, and I was always the rough, tough one, pushing my way through things, she says sadly. Now I think of her as the strong one, because she went out like a soldier. In that deserted parking lot, Gatineau police say, Kelly evidently tried to fight off her attacker. And on days like today, Roxanne cant stop herself from imagining the way her cousin diedfighting for her life, hanging on despite her wounds, thinking of her family and her children, hoping that someone would arrive in time to save her. Kelly Morrisseaus life was a struggle right up to its last moments. At press time, police had not made an arrest in the case. Roxanne says she has had dreams about the man in the sketch police have released to the public. She says she tries to catch the man, but he always seems to be just out of reach. Though she knows someone is directly responsible for Kellys death, she says she also believes that society has played a role, pushing young native women to its margins, where they may fall prey to men who believe that they wont be missed. And shes not alone in her struggle to understand the terrible pattern of violence. The Native Womens Association of Canada is in the midst of a five-year project to document the experiences of families like hers. Called Sisters In Spirit, its aim is to raise awareness of the plight of native women. Roxanne, her mother, and Kellys mother are sharing their familys sad stories in the hope that others will learn from them.

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