Brandi Morin - Our Voice of Fire: A Memoir of a Warrior Rising

Tina

I stood in the driveway of my friends place and shifted impatiently from foot to foot, blowing on my hands for warmth. Springtime in Winnipeg doesnt exactly qualify as balmy, and that chilly morning in 2019 was no exception. I checked my phone for the hundredth time. Where were they? Id barely slept last night, tossing and turning on the mattress on the floor in my friends spare room. Morning seemed to take forever to arrive as it always does when youre anticipating something.

Finally, a white car pulled up and I jumped in the back seat. Two men sat in the front and my heart instantly jumped into my throat, as it did every time I had to ride in a strangers car. I swallowed the fear and said a prayer. This is a job, we are a team, and everythingwill work out, I told myself.

Besides, I wasnt a helpless child anymore. I was thirty-eight years old and working on a story with the New York Times! Here was arguably the most important media outlet in the world looking to give attention to our people. In all my years as a journalist our stories had barely made the headlines in Canada. This was a huge breakthrough. Finally, our voices will be heard, and maybe the world will start to care about the injustices happening here, I thought to myself. I took a deep breath.

The man in the passenger seat turned around. He was about ten years older than me with short, nicely groomed facial stubble and tousled dark hair. He might have been able to pass for a shorter version of Clark Kent.

Brandi, he said, his hand extended. So nice to finally meet you. Im Dan and this is Aaron Vincent, our photographer. He motioned towards the driver with his other hand. Heart racing, I pushed myself forward and shook his hand.

I knew who he was of course. Dan Bilefsky, Oxford University graduate and renowned journalist, whod spent his early career travelling the world as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times before returning home to Montreal to work as Canadian correspondent exclusively for the NYT.

This is my first time in Winnipeg, actually. His voice had an unfamiliar lilt to it.

Okay, Im curious. Where is your accent from? I asked.

He chuckled. Yeah, I get that a lot. You see, Ive lived all over the world and speak a few languages, so French is the dominant accent, but theres a mix of London English, and an influence from my time spent in Brussels.

Pretty neat, I said with a gulp. Like he wasnt intimidating enough. But, I reminded myself, I am the one who reached out to him and he is the one who said yes.

A few months before, I had emailed him on a whim to ask him whether the NYT was interested in commissioning Indigenous stories. If so, I was the person they were looking for. To my surprise, Dan answered and said they were hungry for Indigenous content. (Yes, he used the word hungry!)

Then, a couple of weeks ago, Dan emailed me. I finally have an Indigenous story to do ASAP and I would love to work with you on it, he wrote. My pulse skipped. omg, Brandi, just keep your cool.

He continued, The story is this: the government, as you probably know, will soon be coming out with its long overdue report on disappeared and murdered Indigenous women and girls. I would like to write a story ahead of the report that would ideally focus on one very compelling survival narrative and talk to families of people who lost their daughters.

I was familiar with the issue. It was something Id been writing about for years as an Indigenous reporter. The vanishing and murder of our women has been ongoing since 1492, but governments and police agencies only began reluctantly documenting this crisis over the last few decades. And their motivation to respond has been practically non-existent. This, despite the fact that all across North America, Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately targeted by violence. A few years ago, the cries for justice from the families and survivors started to be heard in the mainstream. This had compelled the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). The report Dan was referring to was the long overdue finding from the commissioners, scheduled for release in June 2019.

I had no idea if the reports recommendations would make any difference whatsoever, but here was the NYT wanting to cover it! Too often in this business, especially as an Indigenous person, we need to fight for our stories to reach the mainstream. Its a continual push to convince editors that our stories are worthy of the spotlight. And when the rare story does hit the global circuit, theres a long history of non-Indigenous reporters getting it wrong resulting in a legacy of mistrust between the media and Indigenous communities. I was determined to do everything in my power to make sure the media got this story right. I emailed Dan back and asked how I could help.

He asked me to be his fixer. To be honest, I didnt even know what that was. He said he wanted to connect with some of the families and wondered if I knew anyone who would be a good subject to feature. The word subject didnt sit well with me. We they are people and these are incredibly painful stories to recall. But yes, I had several ideas of who to approach so I answered yes and then googled the term fixer.

My heart sank as I read that a fixer is someone who helps journalists in a foreign nation navigate the culture and countryside. I was a reporter. I wanted to help write this story, not just provide an in with Indigenous families. So I pushed back, and to my delight, Dan said that it might be possible for me to co-write the piece and get my name in the NYT as a contributor. Well, all I needed was a foot in the door in order to kick it down.

We decided to focus the story on the murder of Tina Fontaine, a fifteen-year-old First Nations girl whose tiny body had been wrapped in a duvet, weighed down with stones, and dumped in the Red River in Winnipeg, in the summer of 2014.

Id watched the newsreels of a tow truck lifting her body covered by a tarp from the river. Those images had played over and over in my head for weeks. My guts churned for this child who was taken so easily and so callously. Fifty-three-year-old Raymond Cormier was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in her killing but was acquitted in 2018. Her murder is still unsolved.

Something about Tinas young, beautiful, innocent-looking face splattered across headlines shook the nation. Perhaps it was the fact that she looked like any other girl other than her brown skin. Perhaps it was the way her body was disposed of like trash. Whatever it was about this childs murder, people finally saw our women and girls as human beings not just another dead Indian, a runaway, or a hopeless drunk on a bender.

Tinas murder woke people up to the crisis. Her short, tragic life helped shift public opinion to support a national inquiry something that Indigenous communities had been demanding for years. So Tinas story was the right one to revisit in connection to the reports final findings all these years later, but I knew there was always a cost to the family when reopening these wounds.

I called Thelma Favel, Tinas great-auntie and the person who had raised her, to request an in-person interview. She informed me that she was taking a break from the media. Shed given countless interviews over the years and had endured the prodding for the sake of Tina, but each time it was draining and excruciatingly painful for her. And so often, the way Tinas story was retold broke her heart. But as we spoke, I felt her soften. I knew my voice was comforting to her the nuances are familiar in Indian Country even if our nations and cultures are deeply varied. I also sensed she understood that I actually cared and I wasnt just some robotic reporter looking to come in, take a piece of her life, and push an insensitive story out. She decided that she wanted to do it, to give Tina a voice from the grave. Her words choked me up and I shuddered at the sudden vision I had of the thousands of women and girls whose souls are roaming the lands of this nation, voiceless, yet calling for justice.