Fighting for rights

Norma General has trouble composing herself when she talks about the killing of her granddaughter, Tashina.

“Violence is everywhere,” the Cayuga (Haudenosaunee) Faithkeeper said through tears. “Because we have endured so much, it’s almost like the norm for people.”

She said her family is devastated by the loss of two young lives – Tashina’s and that of her unborn son. She feels the fact that only one charge could be laid is wrong and is pushing for legislation to penalize injury to a fetus.

“That unborn baby, we heard his heartbeat,” General said. “I think that law would be a statement coming from an unborn child to say, ‘I had a right to life,’ and that’s why I want it to be called Tucker’s law.”

Tashina, 21, three months pregnant with a baby she had already named Tucker, was reported missing Jan. 23 from her home in Ohsweken, on the Six Nations reserve in southern Ontario. General said that Six Nations police did not take the family’s initial reports seriously.

Tashina’s remains were found three months later in a shallow grave on the reserve. She had been strangled. Tashina’s ex- boyfrien d, Kent Owen Hill, 20, a star lacrosse player and student at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, N.Y., is in custody, charged with second-degree murder in her death, the reserve’s first such case in 19 years.

Bill C-484, a private member’s bill put forward by Conservative MP Ken Epp from Edmonton, Alberta, was a bid to criminalize causing death or injury to an unborn child while committing an offense. It had received second reading in the House of Commons but died when the Conservative government called an election for Oct. 14.

However, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson had already signaled that Bill C-484 would not make it into law when he announced in August that a new bill would be drafted that would punish criminals who harm pregnant women but would not create fetal rights. “Let me be clear. Our government will not reopen the debate on abortion,” Nicholson told reporters.

Recent studies have found that pregnant women are at increased risk of violence. The Canadian Perinatal Surveillance System has identified the frequency of physical abuse during pregnancy as equal to or greater than other complications that are a major focus of prenatal care.

“It’s too difficult to know that it happened here in our own territory,” a grief-stricken General said. “That people don’t know the value of life, that they’re so far away from our culture – not to be honored that there was a child coming.”

At General’s invitation, the Walk4Justice marchers from Vancouver made a detour Aug. 30 on their way to Ottawa to make a presentation about their efforts to raise awareness of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

“I felt they were bringing strength with them,” General said. “The thunderers, they come from the West. So I feel in my mind, they were bringing good medicine. When they were on their journey, we had thunder and lightning. They were bringing the power with them.”