Roxanna Thompson
Northern News Services

Fort Smith (Nov 28/05) - A native women's organization is outraged after e-mails circulating between government offices were uncovered containing crude jokes about aboriginal women.

"It makes me really angry," said Terry Villeneuve, president of the Native Women's Association of the NWT, after looking at copies of some of the messages.

The e-mails dating back to October 2003 use women, aboriginals, seniors and Catholics as the brunt of jokes and pornographic comics.

The messages were sent by a staff member at the South Slave Divisional Education Council office in Fort Smith. Their recipients included council superintendent Curtis Brown and Al Karasuik, principal of Fort Smith's Paul William Kaeser high school.

One joke called "You have to love Indian women" contains lines including, "for their ability to make that all-tourney T-shirt and shorts into the one and only Indian swimsuit." Some of the comics were pornographic in nature portraying the sex lives of seniors.

"They are getting government money to provide education. People with that kind of mindset shouldn't be educating people at all," said

Villeneuve, who's also the president of the Deninu Ku'e Senior's Society.

Brown said the e-mails were a "joke of the day" around the office.

"I do apologize on behalf of our organization to any individual who might have been offended," said Brown.

Karasuik said if any of the jokes were derogatory, he didn't notice.

He said he hasn't opened any of the e-mails for over a month, and usually deletes them. "Usually they're just jokes," he said.

Other recipients of the e-mails included the staff at the South Slave Divisional Education Council, the vice-principal of Paul William Kaeser high school, a staff member from Industry, Tourism and Investment and a staff member of the Hay River Human Resource Service centre.

"He's (the sender) a very positive person and his intent was to share an occasional funny to keep office morale positive," Brown said.

Brown admits that he didn't pay much attention to the content of the e-mails to judge their appropriateness, but said there were no previous complaints even though the e-mails carried on for more than two years.

"I can honestly say there was no ill intent by this person," said Brown.

"I'm surprised and disappointed that someone would use an official e-mail system to broadcast that kind of ethnic and sexist material," said Jane Groenewegen, MLA for Hay River South after seeing some of the messages.

"It's sad in this day and age," she said.

Norman Yakeleya, MLA for the Sahtu, was also shocked by the content of the e-mails.

"My blood is boiling," said Yakeleya.

"We cannot tolerate this," he said. "The government has to take a strong stance."

The messages were sent using the South Slave Divisional Education board's e-mail system. The employees of the board follow the guidelines for e-mails set out by the government of the Northwest Territories, said Brown.

The guideline states that inappropriate use of e-mails can result in disciplinary action. Such use includes producing, "hate mail, harassment, discriminatory remarks and other anti-social behaviour."

This matter is being taken very seriously, said Mark Cleveland, the deputy minister of education, culture and employment.

Brown said he couldn't comment on whether or not disciplinary action will be taken because it's a personnel matter. The employee has been asked to stop sending the e-mails and has voluntarily sent a message to everyone on his e-mail list to apologize if they were offended, said Brown.

"If anybody's feelings were hurt we want to know," Brown said.