Monday, November 21, 2005
According to evidence presented at his trial on a charge of manslaughter, Stanley struck Joni, split her lip and broke a tooth. When he grabbed a knife, witnesses to the beating fled into the night. They returned to find Joni with a knife wound. She died 90 minutes later at the health centre.
The couple married less than a year earlier, despite warnings from Joni's family.
Itsi had been charged with manslaughter in the 1999 beating death of another Fort McPherson man, but the evidence against him was tainted. He was acquitted and the caution could not stand against Joni's love for the man she was determined to make a life with.
This time, the jury returned with a guilty verdict. The court sentenced Itsi to eight years. He will be eligible for parole in 30 months.
James Andre, Joni's father, disagreed with the jury's finding and the judge's sentence, which he dismissed as a mere slap on the wrist. Stanley Itsi, in Andre's view, was guilty of murder, not manslaughter.
"It's terrible. This justice system is not working for us," was James Andre's anguished conclusion.
Joni Andre's heartbroken family expected the court to balance accounts, to make Stanley Itsi pay for killing their daughter and sister with a life sentence - the maximum for manslaughter.
The expectation for redress might be naive, but the Andre family is right. Stanley Itsi's sentence sends the wrong message in a society where violence is common. It says that some lives are worth less, that to terrorize and murder in a drunken rage are small things.
Finally, the sentence is as cowardly as Stanley Itsi's violence against the woman who found something in him to love. The people of the Northwest Territories would be better served by courts with the courage to throw Stanley Itsi and his ilk into prison and keep them there.
What is an apology worth if you don't know what the person did?
The short answer is it's worth nothing.
This is the situation we are facing in the legislative assembly. Last Tuesday, Speaker Jobie Nutarak stood up and apologized for something he did but refused to say what it was.
The other MLAs, those people in cabinet and Premier Paul Okalik have refused to reveal to the people what the Speaker was apologizing for. Worse, MLAs are saying they don't even know why Nutarak is apologizing in public.
Now, like a child in a schoolyard who has done something wrong, something hurtful to himself or others, Nutarak has convinced his schoolmates to keep silent so the teacher doesn't find out.
In criminal law, when others keep silent, they become accomplices. In this instance, the MLAs have made themselves part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
When questioned by Nunavut News/North, Kitikmeot MLA Keith Peterson respectfully declined to comment on the correctness of the apology but he did say that had he done something that he and others felt he should apologize for, he would certainly be honest about what he had done.
This is not the type of political leadership that wins votes or friends among the MLAs. This is the type of leadership that says, don't go there because the ice is bad. It's common sense.
The assembly is on very bad ice here. Whether the MLAs know what is behind the apology or not, they have decided to protect one of their own from public opinion.
They were elected by the public, they are well paid by the public, they are accountable to the public and now they are insulting the public.
In fact, they have raised themselves above the public and have said the public does not deserve the truth. This is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Whoever was behind the decision, the apology was the right thing to do. But by only going half way, the credibility of all MLAs has been put on the line.
The legislative assembly is not a private club that can set its own rules. It's a public club and the public has a right to know what politicians are doing.
MLAs must reconsider their earlier decision to keep silent and ensure Speaker Nutarak tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Nunavummiut deserve that respect.
Editorial Comment
Darrell Greer
Kivalliq News
It's almost the same for me every year, with only the number of little blood red flowers being different.
I pull out my shoe box of poppies, which now number 47 - one for each year I've lived as a free person.
You would think it would become rather robotic over time - lift the cover, throw in the poppy and put back the box.
Yet, I still find myself reflecting on those who put their lives on the line to protect our freedom.
My family has always answered the call to arms to protect our freedom.
And, like most who answer, some of my relatives came back and some didn't.
I have six close relatives who fought in the First or Second World War.
Four came home. Two did not.
You gain an understanding of the horrors of war when your family has a military background.
Some of my relatives could talk about their experiences, others could not.
All shared one thing in common, any wartime tale always ended in tears.
As a youngster growing up, I listened attentively on the rare occasions when a story was told (usually after the storyteller had digested a fair share of holiday cheer).
I don't know why they captivated me so, other than to say they moved me in a way I was not yet old enough to understand.
One such tale has always stuck with me.
A young merchant mariner was one of a handful of survivors plucked from the Atlantic ocean by British seamen after their cargo ship had been torpedoed by a German U-Boat.
They were brought to London, England, where they had to wait for an Allied convey heading back across the Atlantic.
The young sailor sobbed when the air-raid sirens began to wail.
He made it to the shelter and sat huddled with the masses, shaking as the bombs rocked the ground above them.
In the morning, as he knew would happen, the British captain showed up to gather his Canadian "crew" to search the twisted rubble for survivors.
In three weeks of searching almost every single morning, the Canadians hadn't found a single survivor, only the charred-and-broken remains of those who couldn't, or wouldn't, go to the shelters.
His huge hands shook and his eyes stared off to a distant place as he described the scenes around the mountains of rubble.
Mothers cried out their pain as they pulled out bodies for the waiting Red Cross workers.
People hurried past with their collars pulled up tight, refusing to look in the direction of their own possible destiny.
Smoke stung their eyes and the tips of their fingers bled raw as they clawed through the stone and concrete.
It was a miracle any of them kept their sanity long enough to sail home.
For the rest of his days the man would wake up in the middle of the night soaked in sweat, haunted by the cries of the grieving and the smells of the dead.
He knew the sacrifice made and the price paid well.
And I knew that sailor well. He was my father, Rufus Thompson Greer.
Lest I ever forget...
Editorial Comment
Jason Unrau
Inuvik Drum
This past Friday, Nov. 11, many Canadians took a moment out of their lives to think about the sacrifices our countrymen and women have made on battlefields which litter the 20th century.
Of course we musn't forget the wars that took place previous to the First World War, but Remembrance Day was born in the modern era. Its symbol is a poppy and the day's significance was punctuated not so much by the Great War but rather that conflict's second act, the Second World War, in which there clearly was an evil: Hitler and his henchmen's bloodthirsty conquest of Europe. This failed painter was obviously the bad guy and everyone knows what bad guys have got coming to them.
Now enter the Korean War, which followed the Second "great war" a mere five years later, more or less precipitating the "quagmire" of Vietnam and so on. In a nutshell, the lines of "right" and "wrong" start to blur. What did all these armed conflicts mean in terms of "good" versus "evil"? Essentially, there no longer was a distinguishable bad guy lurking in the hinterland bent on the destruction of mankind, as we knew it.
Keep in mind that during the Second World War the good guys (us) were aligned with villains like Stalin, whose purge of his own people in the Soviet Union is said to have surpassed Hitler's body count. But when we're dealing with millions upon millions of dead, these figures, sadly, become mere trivia, overshadowed by politics. To paraphrase something I heard through the media haze last week during the buildup to coverage of Remembrance Day: Canadians take comfort in the fact the reasons this country went to war were the right ones. Well isn't that a truth we can all live with, because if we're going to send people out to get killed for the wrong reasons, what a shame that would be.
Ultimately, only God knows the answer to the brain-stinger, which brings me to my point.
At Sir Alexander Mackenzie school gymnasium last Friday, those in attendance were treated to what could best be described as a "sermon from the mount" as it related to our nation entering the Second World War. The speaker had a captive audience and his sentiment was plain enough and frankly, quite thought-provoking given the "socio-economic" situation this town finds itself in; what with all the drug and alcohol abuse and their trickle-down effects.
Basically the speaker was questioning the worth Canadian blood spilt on those battlefields as it related to his view of society-at-large's current direction.
Fortunately, I've never had to experience combat. The closest I ever came was travelling by bus along the militarized border of India and Pakistan (they fought two wars in this century). I remember the Indian tanks sitting restless in the sand while the music on the bus played so loud it impaired passengers' abilities to hear Indian fighter jets screaming less than 100 metres overhead.
Anyways, on Remembrance Day I think about the sacrifice people made so that I could travel in foreign lands with a backpack rather than a gun. But regardless of me not having served in the armed forces or been in battle, what I can say with certainty is that Canadian soldiers have never spilt blood on any battlefield to end abortion or ensure the Lord's Prayer would be recited each morning in Canadian schools.
Sentiments such as these heard at our Remembrance Day observance are not those of the majority, rather opinions from one religious faction.
Pause for a moment to think about that the next time you tune into the war on terror.
Editorial Comment
Derek Neary
Deh Cho Drum
They were the pot-smoking comedy duo that starred in a series of movies in the 1980s. They had some amusing run-ins with the cops and were always in pursuit of an innovative way to get high.
Has our society changed much since those days? Well, kind of.
Today there are plenty of rappers and comedians who glamorize pot use. Heck, even historian and literary icon Pierre Burton appeared on CBC television last year to give tips on rolling a doobie.
On the legal front, the federal government has approved marijuana use for medicinal purposes, usually to dull pain. Parliament has toyed with the idea of decriminalizing small amounts of pot. That would mean it is still illegal to possess a few joints but the penalty for having it would be a fine, not a criminal record. Selling the stuff, though, would still land you in a heap of trouble.
In 2002, a Canadian Senate committee actually recommended taking it a step further and legalizing pot for adults.
Marijuana alters a person's state of mind. There are healthier ways to do that: meditation, yoga, a sweat lodge, tai chi and exercise just to name a few. Regardless, some argue that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol - which is legal - because pot smokers are more often tranquil than violent.
Others remain vehemently opposed to it on moral grounds. The police want to remind everyone that every joint purchased is essentially supporting organized crime - i.e. biker gangs from Alberta and B.C. It's thought that they are the ones who are ultimately supplying the stuff found in Fort Simpson.
Some people believe pot is a "gateway drug," eventually leading users to much stronger narcotics. Some dealers in the south have been known to cunningly lace marijuana cigarettes with crystal meth to get users hooked on that drug. It has also been theorized that the relatively benign marijuana of the 1960s and '70s has largely been replaced by much more concentrated, potent weed nowadays.
Like cigarettes, dope pollutes the lungs. Similar to alcohol, it impairs reflexes and makes it extremely dangerous to operate heavy equipment or drive a car. But it could be argued that people can smoke marijuana responsibly just as some people can drink socially and responsibly.
So, do you know of any marijuana smokers? Most people do. And what do you think of those people? Are they the despicable? Or are they decent, accomplished citizens who happen to have "bad habit?" Chances are they could be either, or anywhere in between.
Another contentious question is whether an elected leader who is caught with marijuana still merits his or her office. As we approach National Addictions Awareness Week, any community leader who is ready to stand up and make a public presentation on the dangers of drug and alcohol use should be walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Either that, or come clean with his or her true thoughts on reefer madness.
Perhaps most troubling is that a couple of Fort Simpson teens were apprehended for smoking up last week. Were they just dabbling, or are they on a slippery slope? If only we knew for sure the answer to that question.
In the Wednesday edition of Yellowknifer it was incorrectly reported that 40 per cent of $1.15 million in energy conservation funding will go towards advertising. In fact, just under 40 per cent of the money allotted to the Arctic Energy Alliance - just over $500,000 - will flow into awareness programs. Yellowknifer regrets the error.